Hymn to a Satyr
by TheSematary'sProgeny
Summary: Rewritten! Ancient Roman AU. Over a century after Godric commits a terrible crime, he returns to his hometown in pursuit of Eric's mortality and affections, even as he is haunted by memories of his own Maker. A life apart would be certainly safer for the slave and the soldier, but love is rarely so wise.
1. The Slave: A Fool's Errand

**The Roman Empire, 115 A.D.**

A soldier galloped near, his horse breathing heavily from the pace, and I watched from above.

In seconds his mount would pass the trunk of my tree. I leapt, knocking the soldier to the ground with the weight of my body. The fall tore the helmet from his head without my aid; it gave little sound as it rolled a small distance away from us. The animal raced onward as I pressed my knees and hands into the man's stomach and forearms and sank my fangs into his neck.

And drank, and drank, and drank.

The blood I drank was thin and hot, pulsing swiftly upward into my mouth, almost as though it wished for me to consume it. The blood that I drank was earthy and sweet, rich with the hardships and rewards of military service. And the blood that I drank was fresh and wet, and I was free to take it until it was gone completely.

I could imagine nothing more precious.

Whether that precious thing was blood or freedom was, at that moment, difficult to determine.

I also seemed unable to determine my own name. It had been there, for a fraction of a second, whispered across the furthest reach of my thoughts, but the blood I was gulping was so honeyed, so life-giving, so eager for me and I for it—surely there would be time for remembering names later? There always had been before...

But right now, there was only my hunger, and my source of nourishment. It was not sensible for my fellow, four-footed predators that stalked the forest to be concerned with anything else, and so neither should I.

Everything I saw was red. The gurgling man beneath me was red. The dirt in the woods surrounding the gurgling man was red. The insides of my own eyelids were red...

I tore open another vein, shaking away the fixation as I worried the soldier's throat with my teeth, and more blood filled my mouth.

I was so hungry...

The blood was swelling my cheeks nearly to the bulging point now before each swallow.

Perhaps I should slow my pace... try to savor the meal a little...

My stomach gurgled in response. I continued to gulp crimson.

Soon I could feel myself warming. Could feel the human's blood soaring through my veins to nourish and replenish my own blood. Could feel the strength of a properly-fed human body begin to fade.

Could feel the heartbeat of that body: _whoosh-thump_, _whoosh-thump_. Infrequently now.

That pulse was my life. Not his. Mine. Everything was either mine or not-mine. This was in the nature of what I was.

And that knowledge of possession brought back another thought belonging to two-legged predators: my name. It returned suddenly, like a gust of wind on an otherwise calm night.

_Godric! Godric, Godric, Godric._ I longed to whisper it to myself, as I sometimes had in my childhood, following times of stress. (My name, being my sole possession, had long been a small comfort to me.) Stress was now here again, in the form of my receding animal nature that was slowly being replaced—replaced with the knowledge of a life in which almost everything had been taken from me.

I shivered.

Gradually, a knowledge of my surroundings began to grow with the fading of my hunger. My skin prickled in a pleasant sort of way as I fancied I could feel moonlight filtering down through the bare branches of the trees to rest on the back of my tunic, like the motherly hand of a hunter-goddess who was pleased with her worshiper's choice of prey.

But I had long ago lost hope and belief in such a goddess, and in mothers.

The _rustle-skitter_ of a lizard through what were surely last winter's fallen leaves reached my ears; the distant growl of a bear followed it. I paused for breath between one swallow and the next, a human habit I had mostly gotten rid of, and the scent of burning wood swept into my nostrils.

Burning wood...?

I tore myself from the throat of my prey with a choking gasp, eyes darting for the flame, who was both a great friend and a great enemy to me. He was like the sun: both meant either the presence of humans and their living blood, or death, or both.

All I could see were trees: towering trunks and naked limbs stretched for leagues around me, each eerily similar to the next in my panic.

No wonder I had nearly starved to death here.

Finally my eyes were drawn to a yellowish light about the size of a candle flame—which, as far as I could tell, was drawing no nearer towards me.

The tension slumped from me, and only then could I appreciate the sensation of blood dripping down my chin. I licked it, savoring the drops, before returning my attention back to my latest discovery.

My lips parted as I inhaled—an unconscious habit I had developed not long after I was turned, enjoying the sensation of air flowing over my fangs as I did—and sure enough, the smell of smoke came from the direction of the distant glow. It intertwined itself with my fangs: an aroma I could not quite taste. The faint scents of humans and pack animals were present also: the first promising further nourishment to my gnawing insides, the second promising that the first were likely to soon move on.

The roots of my fangs were throbbing. I trembled at the thought of further nourishment after I had starved for so long, at the thought of the blood rising in me until my feeding transformed into a different sort of pleasure, and my hand moved to rest between my thighs...

But giving in to that need would bring back other sources of stress, and not the stress that accompanied the release I sought.

"Godric," I whispered, and the tension that I had not realized remained in my body left me.

Abruptly I remembered the soldier beneath me—and upon looking down at him, felt my stomach drop when I saw that the remainder of his blood had pooled on the earth around us, reddening the dirt further than what I had seen before.

The blood was now no longer fit for my consumption.

Though my belly was not quite full, and though the man beneath me was almost completely unremarkable—of average height for a Roman, with brown hair and eyes (they had been open when his body stilled)—I persisted in examining the soldier whose blood now flowed through my veins.

One feature held my attention in particular: his nose had been broken. Perhaps it had happened when we hit the ground; perhaps it happened when the helmet was removed from his skull. Despite the fact that I had been a creature of the night for over one hundred and forty-two years, and had certainly seen many a broken nose in that time, I could not tear my gaze from the bloody lump that marred the man's face.

I had once been told that I was like a child, either fixating on a single object for hours or dashing from one thing to the next without pause. It had taken a while to realize the truth of this for myself, but soon after I did I learned to recognize what I was doing, and either stopped myself or continued on in my course, depending on what served my purpose at the time.

Now I stopped myself, as I had been stopping myself more and more frequently of late, with the reminder that there was no one with whom I could share my observations, my fascination—

The tiny light, so far away in the corner of my eye, nevertheless shone clearly.

Perhaps I could find the companion I sought within the realm of its glow.

I had been searching for a companion, a child, for only the past few decades. Nearly the beginning score of my life had passed completely under the control of others, but that had soon given way to precious, glorious freedom. This second period of my life had lasted—was still lasting—a long time. And in it, having never been much of a social creature myself, I often observed my prey from the shadows before going in for the kill. I had watched all manner of family and especially military groups: fathers and sons, commanding officers and infantrymen, uncles and nieces, grandmothers and grandsons... I had watched them work, laugh, play, eat, talk, smile, embrace, mate...

Was it not natural that I eventually began to long for someone with whom I could do all these things and more with? Some one to travel with and care for me despite what I had once been—what I sometimes felt I still was—and what I had once done?

Or was I, as my human life had proven time and time again, simply a fool?

Of course I was.

I traveled the ever-expanding Empire, each night thinking, _Perhaps I will find a comrade here... or there—Yes, there!_ Each time, I raced toward the appointed spot on the horizon, my stomach twisting and the blood in my veins pounding, so _certain_ that _this time_ I would find the one man who was destined to walk the world with me—

Only to find that that spot was populated by uncreative, disloyal beings whose fighting skills (always I searched for a soldier!) were worth less than a coin of the lowest value. Their blood was spilled freely in my frustration and disgust.

_Yes, every time it's_ There! I know it! _and every time you fail. Perhaps it's better that way. I'd always wanted to keep you for myself—but, _you_ knew that... But, if you insist on continuing this foolish quest of yours, might I suggest you search the sun for a companion next? Then we would always be together, and you would never be alone._

I closed my eyes tightly against he sensation of a terribly cold hand rubbing the back of my neck in a mockery of a soothing caress; a shudder rippled up my spine and air hissed inward from between my teeth at the icy gesture.

No, I would not be influenced by the memory of that awful, ever-sneering voice any longer. I would _not_ allow it to affect me tonight! I _would NOT!_

The chilly sensation was suddenly gone, as though it had never existed.

The hunch in my shoulders took much longer to ease.

I had to get away from this place.

A last, prompt scan of the uniform worn by my victim revealed a leather scroll pouch tied to the waist: this man had not only been a soldier, but also a messenger. A messenger whose horse, if my previous starvation had not completely befuddled my memory and sense of direction, had been traveling towards the rising moon, and therefore away from the tiny flickering light in the distance that may or may not be accompanied by my longed-for child.

I skimmed the missive I found inside the tube: a brief reassurance to the head of a legion that an unnamed cargo—spoils from any of the numerous wars the Empire was currently engaged in, no doubt—would arrive in the Capital within a few months' time. This was, as far as I knew, an accurate assumption, for this message still had not told me where I was.

But still I felt a smile twitching at the corners of my mouth as my gaze returned to the promising glow. Still my stomach was twisting, the blood in my veins was pounding, and the exposure of my fangs to the moonlit air as my smile widened caused them to tingle pleasantly. Soldiers were soldiers: even while not in combat, even while resting and joking with one-another as they discussed how large of a reward their gift of treasure to the city might bring, I could watch them all night.

If the man beneath me had been a foot soldier, I would certainly have stolen his sandals before burying him: the nails in their soles would have provided traction, which even one of my kind could recognize as useful. As it was, this man was obviously a member of the cavalry, with no nails in his shoes lest they harm his horse while he rode, and so I elected to remain barefoot. I kicked dirt and leaves over the body and its helmet, purposefully leaving them partially exposed. Lesser, four-footed beasts who roamed in the dark as I did would locate the body and easily make my hand in its demise unrecognizable.

Then I ran.

Air pressed against my front, impeding my progress only slightly as it swept back along my face and ears and forced the skirt of my tunic back against my thighs, and impeding the rush in my blood that I received from running not at all. I dodged several beech trees, reaching out to caress one smooth trunk with my palm as I passed; the trees' branches were too far overhead to be disturbed by my speed. Though I could not fly, as I had seen one or two ancient others of my kind do, and though I had never been one to boast—for I had never had anything to boast about—I could not help but recognize that I had always been light on my feet, and knew that in these moments of swift feet the finer sounds of my passing would not be detected by human ears. I sped through a flock of sleeping quail and was gone again long before I heard the startled fowl explode from the brush and into flight with a roaring of wings.

And the candle flame grew ever closer—and ever larger, and split into four campfires within a spacious clearing.

One campfire for each tent. One fire for each group of eight or nine men clustered around them in quiet conversation; men who would be sleeping in the tents when the night went on and the watches began.

Gripping the bark with fingers and toes, I quickly climbed a beech tree chosen for its height. I sat on a thick branch, legs dangling to either side of it as I leaned slightly forward, resting my hands loosely on the limb stretching out in front of me. Though my tree was bare of leaves, like the other trees here during this wintry season, in it I was still out of the soldiers' human reaches of sight and hearing. I could safely observe the proceedings in this clearing from here until dawn, if I so desired.

Satisfied with my security, I began to search the men's uniforms for the little details that spoke of rank: vertical stripes on the tunic, metal adornments—

A quiet snorting sound reached my ears, drawing my gaze toward several clusters of horses who had been unsaddled for the night and tied to a series of beech trees stretching to the right of my own. Quickly and silently I counted them. There was one horse for each man in the company—thirty-one now, since the horse belonging to the soldier I had recently killed did not appear to have yet returned. Interspersed among the mounts were several donkeys; the saddlebags they would carry while the squadron was traveling were piled in a nearby heap on the ground. The leather bulged out in strange angles, and the postures of the spear-armed, young male slaves surrounding the pile gave off a single impression: one of tension.

Thirty-two soldiers. Thirty-two horses. I was looking for a _decurio_, then.

Almost immediately after this confirmation, I found him. He was in the thick of the men surrounding the fire nearest to my tree, lounging on the grass as though he believed the ground to be as comfortable as a dining couch.

In all my years, I had seen many soldiers whom I found handsome—and drained more than a few of these—and as far as the basic shapes comprising his body went this man was no different than the others. Each limb, where his arms left the confines of his tunic, and where his legs left the knee-length trousers most soldiers wore under their tunics to make riding more comfortable, was defined and muscular. His jaw was strong, clean-shaven like the jaws of all male citizens of Rome, and his eyes were a deep blue. They glittered with his smile, and their light made the stars overhead appear bleak.

I tore myself away from them to continue my perusal of the rest of his body, which along with his legs might, on a second glance, make the decurio taller than the average Roman man when he stood—much, much taller. The only other feature immediately suggesting that his family might have originated in a northern part of the Empire was his blond hair, cut short and combed forward in accordance with what was surely the current fashion.

Other than those remarkable features, he appeared to be the perfect model of a born-and-bred Roman citizen.

And of course he chewed the same as other soldiers, tearing off large hunks of bread with his teeth, and his throat bulged and flexed when he swallowed, just as other men's did when they swallowed.

When the decurio swallowed for a third time, I felt the tip of my tongue slowly cross my lower lip. My still-exposed fangs were once-again throbbing. Gradually I became aware that I was breathing with human regularity, and instinctively I suppressed a gasp when I leaned forward to get a better look at him and felt just how tender the place the branch pressed against had become.

But this man was no different than any other soldier I had previously encountered. There was nothing uniquely intriguing about him. That damnable branch was probably right to keep me in my current position.

Still, I had no words to describe how it would feel simply to stand close to the man... to breathe in his scent... to kiss the veins in his neck—and be kissed in return...

But I had felt this way about many Roman soldiers. It was a natural reaction, purely physical, the admiration of a little boy morphed into the desires of a permanently adolescent creature whose very survival depended on a complex system of lusts.

"She said she thinks she still has about four months more to go, though the letter is dated to a few months past, so she may have given birth by now. One thing she definitely knows is that this one kicks harder than I did."

The breath froze in my throat. I had spoken Latin myself and heard it in conversation throughout the Empire nearly all of my life, and yet its cadences had never sounded so beautiful as when they came from the mouth of the decurio, in answer to a question I had missed. There was the slightest hint of an accent interspersed among the syllables—from a region of the Empire close to Germania, perhaps?—but this imperfection only made his voice more... appealing.

A dark-haired man sitting to the right of the leader of the cavalry regiment laughed. "Is that shame I hear in your voice, because you have been beaten by one so much younger than you?"

A pair of pale brows lifted. "Shame? I've never heard the word. What does it mean?"

The entire group around the fire laughed. I felt a smile again tug at the corners of my mouth despite myself.

Every man in the group was leaning slightly towards their commanding officer, as though not simply in order to hear him better, but also as though they were gravitated towards his presence. I wished I could be nearer to him myself, if the position would not have possibly jeopardized my advantage over them all. To be a part of the group around that fire, to belong with and be one of those soldiers, was a childhood dream long-since murdered. To sit or lie close to him would be enough.

"So what does she think the baby's sex will be, boy or girl?" This from a fair-haired soldier on the decurio's left.

"She thinks it's a girl, because of all the kicking." More laughter. "Father's hoping for another boy, of course, but he'll love anything associated with Mother." The decurio was quiet for a moment. "I think I'd like a girl. You can only look after a boy for so long before he grows up and becomes a copy of his father. You can watch over a woman forever." He lifted a drinking horn that was passed to him to his mouth.

"Can you watch over a slave boy forever? You seemed pretty keen on pursuing such a course yesterday." The dark-haired man again.

"Absolutely." The decurio grinned over the rim of the cup—the look on his face caused something deep inside me to grow warm—before taking another sip and leaning over a close companion to pass the horn on to someone else. "But I did not fulfill my pursuit, because I am an honorable man, much to my regret. But as soon as I'm on leave..." A pale brow twitched, prompting several snickers.

A nickering sound carried from the group of horses to my ears. I looked to them and saw that their heads were raised, their ears flicking back and forth as they began to shift in place; I followed their gazes back into the darker recesses of the woods.

A group comprised of perhaps three dozen men approached through the forest. They were clearly civilians: no soldier would allow his tunic to remain so filthy, and their efforts to hide behind the trees as they advanced were pathetically ineffective. Nevertheless, the sickles they carried—were the men farmers, perhaps?—were very sharp.

A grin stretched my lips as I returned my attention to the now-alert soldiers: there would be my favorite sort of entertainment, and perhaps a second meal for me to consume, before the night was over.

The decurio rose slowly to his feet, and said quietly, "First formation." His sea-borne eyes never left the advancing enemy as his men came to stand behind and beside him. When he and his comrades unsheathed their swords, the metal rang in my ears like the song of a siren, calling me to my death on the sharp sea-rocks of battle.

This melody of warfare was one to which I was not wholly immune. I fell prey to it every time I watched soldiers engage in combat. But every time I did, I did not act on it: the only soldiers I joined in battle were the ones fighting for one last breath, just before I took it from them.

The decurio was nearly smiling now as he appeared to take note of the civilians' disorganized approach—the first of whom were beginning to emerge into the clearing—as I had. "If you thought to rob us, I'd be glad to deliver the pieces you wished to give to your wives personally."

At this, one of the foremost men rushed at the decurio, teeth gritted and arm raised, sickle gleaming in the moonlight—

And the cavalry's leader sliced the man's hand off at the wrist before switching angles and running his sword through the farmer's throat and out the back of his neck. The civilian stared, eyes bulging, wet choking sounds struggling to flee his open mouth before the decurio removed his bronze blade. Blood spurted as the body crumpled to the ground, and an ache formed in me as the smell of it filled my nostrils.

The decurio wiped the blade clean on the dead man's sleeve, and as he did so I distinctly heard him mutter, "Not one of my better insults."

Everything thereafter that I observed from my perch was seen through a haze of red.

The remaining farmhands rushed forward with a cry at the death of their comrade, and the silent soldiers met their wild hacking with firm sword-strokes and a solid stance.

This contrast was why I had always longed to fight for the Empire's military. Every man was always in control of himself: even though they fought for their country and for their lives, their patriotism and their emotions were always kept in check. Each soldier was entirely responsible for his own actions. The only reason that any one man told them what to do was to help them remain among the living. The only reason for punishment was if they disobeyed—not because they were simply in the same vicinity as the one giving orders. They stood by one-another—

And their decurio stood with them, his cloak—which would have been the color of blood even had I been seeing clearly—whipping about his knees as he turned with his blade to decapitate a farmer on his left. Several horses half-reared against their bonds as they struggled to get away from a body that had fallen nearby; their whinnying cries were like human screams. Braying donkeys began to kick out at the horses and each other in their panic. The slaves who had been guarding the saddlebags rushed to obey the decurio's order—"Get the animals out of here!"—as he sliced through the knees of his next opponent.

I had never seen anything like him.

He fought for his survival and for that of his men... and yet, even at this distance, there was something in his eyes that penetrated deep into my core.

The willingness to die with honor grappling with a great, almost selfish desire to live.

Very few humans ever wished for death when I came to them. Many a soldier had fought me to his last breath for his life even though I knew from my unseen observations that they had been taught that to meet one's end in battle was a respectable death.

But none of them had fought like this decurio against these untrained men. None of them had possessed his willpower. None of them had possessed the way he wielded his sword with an efficiency that could nearly be called graceful. None of them had possessed his fearlessness, counterbalanced with caution.

A contradiction waged war within him, just as my childish body did with my grown mind.

I decided then that I would do everything in my power to make this soldier my child.

Metal rang as the decurio's sword slipped off the curve of a sickle. He kicked his enemy in the shin and buried his blade through the man's shoulder to his chest as the farmer dropped to his knees.

_Yes!_ I praised him silently, wishing he could somehow hear the encouragement locked inside my mind. _That's it. Don't let anyone stop you._

_Don't stop. Keep going. Don't stop._

Dimly I felt my thighs spread slightly on my branch as my lips drew back in a snarl of approval. I was very warm... My eyelids fluttered closed as I inhaled deeply, the scent of sweat adding to the blood, and I wondered which salty scent belonged to the decurio... My eyes opened again just in time to observe the man in question stabbing an enemy straight through the heart. In the back of my mind, I became aware that I was panting slightly—whether from a sympathetic exertion that filled me as I watched the battle or from pure sensual ecstasy, I could not say.

This, too, was in the nature of what I was.

"Eric! Behind you!"

I watched the decurio respond to the name by flipping his blade around in his hands and thrusting it backward into the chest of the man who had been about to stab him in the back. I did not care who had alerted the decurio to this new danger, because the name of the soldier whom I wanted for my own was Eric.

_Eric._

_Eric..._

* * *

Much later, following the battle, I buried myself deep into the ground for the day and reflected on my decision to become a Maker. Was I truly capable of raising a child the way I wished to raise him...?

My dreams, when the sun rose and I slept, were in turn filled with the first time I had met the man who had made me his own.

And those were not happy dreams.

* * *

_**Author's Note:**_** Because Godric, according to Pam's commentaries on the Blu-ray version of the second season of **_True Blood_**, did actually live out his human life in ancient Rome, his past is the only one that I will be writing just as if I were embellishing it to go within the show canon. The pasts of all other **_True Blood_** characters mentioned in this story and what they do with their lives will be adjusted to fit this era while hopefully remaining true to their personalities.**


	2. The Memorial: A Life's Weight in Silver

_One of my first, most vivid memories is of the slave market. To this day, I do not know whether my master made me forget all that came before—the land of my human birth, my human family—in the way that our kind can make humans forget, or if I forgot them under my own power, whether naturally or by some force of will. It would certainly be in his nature to shape my first thoughts around this place._

_I understand everything, now, that went on during my first day and night—for I might as well have not existed before then—but still this does not make the sweats and stomach-flutters I felt then any less powerful._

_I stood on a platform, erected specially for the selling of slaves, that was located off on one side of a busy intersection. A few other young boys surrounded me, their brown, slightly ragged tunics ending just above the knees, as mine did. Our feet were bone-white with chalk; our status as freshly-caught objects, pure and ignorant of servitude, shone out from them like the light of ghosts. Wooden signs hung around our necks on leather cords, describing our ages, where we had come from, whether we had tried to run away, whether we were sick. I did not know, then, that the law decreed that any man who wished to sell his slave must provide this information to a prospective buyer, so that he could not cheat him. I only knew that I did not know where I was, and that there were many things going on at once._

_The market surrounding us was well into a day of selling and haggling. Roman markets are impressive mixtures of organization and chaos that I have rarely seen since leaving this city—this city that, despite everything I suffered here, I cannot think of as anything else but my home. Rows of wooden vendor's stalls draped with cloth lined the buildings surrounding us. Free-born citizens, freedmen, and the occasional, presumably-widowed woman hawked their wares: richly-woven cloth, fresh fruit, pottery, wine, spices from the East... Many, more permanent shops, located on the ground floor of each apartment building towering behind the stalls, would be revealed to me throughout my human life, along with many more goods: newly-baked bread, silkworms, braziers, tables, whips..._

_I did not know much of whips, then. I only remember seeing—and feeling—their use after this day. Perhaps my mind was already removing memories it considered too terrible for it to store away. Perhaps my master wished me to remember the burn of his lashes only._

_But those times do not belong in this memory. I will strive to remain in the marketplace. My master's identity was unknown to me for much of this day; it is therefore slightly less horrible than many I had seen since._

_Fountains and—occasionally broken—statues caught my eye here and there among the buildings; their still, painted forms seemed out-of-place in the throng of breathing, living people._

_A man led a horse slowly through the crowd; I gawped at the creature's white neck, perhaps once proud but now sagged and scarred with age and misuse, and felt a trickle of some unnameable emotion descend my spine like drops of cold water._

_A small crowd of men, with a few women interspersed among them, stood on the ground before our platform. They had been calling out instructions to Aemilius, our squat slave dealer:_

"_Turn her around! Why do you keep hiding her ass?"_

"_Look at that one; he'd be a perfect replacement for that litter carrier that gave out. See, he's the right height, and he's got blond hair like the others, and everything!"_

"_Why is that one castrated? I swear, it's impossible to find a youth who can get a really satisfying erection these days. It's not as though my husband visits my bed often enough to—"_

"_That one's way too thin! I can see his ribs from here!"_

_This comment concerned an extremely skeletal man on the far end of the platform. The captive smiled, almost as though he were pleased that he was not wanted, and I was not the only one biting back a scream: when his lips stretched back from his teeth, a skull with gleaming eyes appeared to be grinning at all of us._

_Aemilius smacked the back of his head, which did not rise from its respectfully lowered position until the man was sold to a gradual, painful death in the mines. I was glad to see him go._

* * *

_My first clear memory of a Roman soldier, too, lies within the space of this day; his presence also bettered an otherwise anxious time._

_A tall, well-built man wearing a leather cuirass over a red tunic ascended the short ladder leaning against the platform at the slaver's nod. His scarlet cloak rippled slightly behind him as he walked up to a woman standing to the right of the boy next to me; the hilt of his blade winked in the sunlight. His dark eyes traced her curved figure; his cheek bulged out as though his tongue might be poking at it while he thought._

_She stared through his shoulder, eyes dull with defeat._

"_What do you think?" This eager question—which came from Aemilius, who stood a few respectful feet away from his latest customer—was one of the few I completely understood at that time. I acquired my first language in spare bits and pieces, most of them cruelly spitted from my master's mouth, others learned from the soldiers who had sold us to Aemilius, months before we reached the Capital. But in the market, with those resources removed from me, I could only try to memorize the arrangement of consonants and vowels, to be made sense of much later._

"_I think I've never bought from you before," the soldier answered slowly, "and I also think this sign you've hung around her neck is lying to me."_

_Aemilius exchanged a quick glance with Albanus, his assistant, from where the thin man stood on the ground between the crowd and the platform, ready to prevent someone from rushing up onto the platform and saving himself up to thousands of _denarii_ for an educated slave by stealing one of us. "Aemilius assures you, sir, that he would never provide false information to a member of the Empire's finest—"_

"_Anyone can see that this woman is older than you claim." The man reached up to wipe away a trace of some sort of concealing makeup from the skin at the corner of her eye; the smallest hint of wrinkles could now be detected in the bared place._

_I noticed then that she was the only slave among us who did not have unnaturally pale feet. Clearly women past a certain age, whatever that age might be, took longer to sell._

_Aemilius pursed his lips before straightening his spine. "Do not forget, my friend—" the soldier's nostrils flared at the presumption "—that age equals experience. This woman has been taught the arts of pleasure."_

_A humming noise of consideration rumbled in the back of the legionnaire's—he must have been a foot soldier, for he wore no riding trousers—throat as he thought over the dealer's statement. "Have her take off her clothes. I want to see what other faults you're hiding from me."_

_Aemilius's smile seemed more of a gritting of the teeth as inclining his head. "But of course. Aemilius will be happy to demonstrate his goods for you." He turned to the woman, the edge in his voice more prominent as he ordered, "Do as the gentleman says."_

_Slowly she removed her sign and her longer women's tunic, which reached nearly to her feet, sweeping her dark hair back over her shoulder and out of the way of her breasts without being asked._

_I could not help staring, for I had never seen a naked woman before. Naked men, certainly—I vaguely remember our slaves' cart being positioned closely enough to a stream that a few soldiers could be seen bathing—but no member of the other sex until this day._

_Still, my interest in her was purely academic. I have never seen the attraction a woman's body is said to hold. There are too many round places. Their shoulders are not broad enough. They do not walk as a man does, instead allowing their hips to sway back and forth, without the rigidity of discipline that a man's stride possesses even in the graceful act of running. They do not possess a man's throat, thick with ropy tendons and the slight bulge in the front. They cannot grow hair on their faces, particularly the short bristles that rasp against my cheek as I feed. Their bodies do not appear to be as easily able to give pleasure to oneself as a man's body is._

_But I must not think about that. My master forbid it. I must always give pleasure only to other men, and never take it for myself._

_The soldier looked inside the slave woman's mouth, testing her teeth and gums with his fingers for signs of infection, and smelled her breath. He ran those same fingers through her hair, weighing its thickness in his palm. He felt her breasts, her hips, between her thighs. Everywhere he stretched the skin, watching carefully as it bounced back into place with varying appearances of elasticity._

_Aemilius began to deliver what I had learned to be his customary sales pitch as the client made his inspection. "She is completely healthy, as you will see. Docile, too; gives everything you ask and more."_

"_Have you had her?" The soldier's aversion toward the idea of the dealer coupling with her was plain in his voice._

_Aemilius held up his hands, palm-outward, in a gesture of peace; even he must know his kind are despised as much as they are deemed necessary to the functioning of our world. "Sir, Aemilius speaks only as a witness. Three hundred denarii and she's yours." It was clear the discussion was closed._

_The soldier turned to face the slaver fully as he proposed a reduction in price, "Two-fifty."_

"_Two-seventy."_

"_Two-sixty-five."_

_Aemilius pursed his lips. "Done." They shook hands. A deposit of silver coins were exchanged; more were promised to come later. The soldier allowed the woman to dress before leading her away by the elbow._

_I watched his back until I could see it no more._

* * *

_Dusk was falling and merchants were packing up their wares for the night when Albanus approached Aemilius with a question. He was sweating even more than usual—the Capital was hot, but not hot enough to produce as much sweat as was on that man—and he persisted in casting quick glances over his shoulder as though he expected someone to appear behind him from thin air. "A man wishes to see you about purchasing one of the boys as a personal slave."_

_Aemilius looked up from counting the days earnings; his gaze traveled the street beyond his assistant, and his brow furrowed. "Where is he?"_

"_A friend of his gave me his message. He said he heard you would be in town today with a few boys, but he would be unable to come during the daytime," Albanus lowered his voice as he finished, "for personal reasons."_

_The color drained abruptly from Aemilius's visage; he was now as white as the chalk covering my feet. "Sons of Death," he cried, "no more of them!"_

_Whether he knew how aptly the curse described my kind, I still do not know._

_The dealer rushed into action, thrusting silver and copper coins into Albanus's hands, sending him off to the shops for a few last-minute purchases. While Albanus was gone, Aemilius bustled around me and the other boys—we were the only ones left—straining to appear as though he were making up for the neglect he had long given us._

_He stripped us and applied the resin of a terebinth tree to our torsos. "To relax the skin," he explained as he smeared the sticky, amber-colored sap on my belly, above the small palms crossed over my groin, "so you can eat and grow plump for our customer." He outlined our eyelids lightly with kohl and rubbed our cheeks to a rosy shine with hematite powder._

_All the while, I resisted the urge to squirm. I have never understood the idea that caked-on powders and eye-irritating squid inks would make the body beautiful. They make even soldiers appear too womanly, and thankfully my sights of one wearing such bothersome materials have been rare._

_Albanus returned with tunics rich in deep blue and gold thread—and a large basket heaping with food. I stared at it as he lowered it to the ground before us: tightly-coiled brown twigs piled with goat cheese, focaccia buns, hard-boiled eggs, olives, and figs._

_Aemilius gestured for us to eat. I snatched up a fig, biting as deeply into the chewy flesh as my small teeth allowed, and was immediately scolded when the juice ran down my chin, spoiling my makeup. After my face was repainted, I took smaller bites and counted myself lucky: on any other evening my legs might have been thrashed with a willow branch—previously stripped of its twigs and leaves—but bruises would not encourage a prospective buyer._

_There were few times since then that I ate so well._

* * *

_By the time we had finished eating and Aemilius and Albanus had dressed us, night had fully come to the Capital. Aemilius paced, straightening our gilded tunics over and over. Albanus was sweating again._

_I was sweating too. What sort of man came out to buy his slaves at night, instead of during the day, as it seemed most people did? Was he some sort of night-roaming beast, like the rebellious man of myth called Lycaon, who was turned into a wolf for daring to serve human flesh to a god? Would this latest client turn his shape and eat us as soon as we were paid for? Or, if he was merely human, would I ever feel the sunlight on my skin again if I were chosen to serve in his house?_

_But I did not have long to speculate, for suddenly he was there, stepping into the flickering light of Albanus's torch; I could not help but flinch as I stared up at him._

_Every grown person is tall to a child, but this man rose head-and-shoulders over both of my captors. The tunic he wore was the ordinary light brown of a man who either could not afford richer garb, or chose not to wear fine clothes to appear humble (my master would prove to be the latter); it stood out against his skin, which was as light as the chalk on my feet. For an instant, because of his complexion, I wondered if he was frightened too, but tucked the assumption away to be reexamined after I had finished observing his other features._

_His build was athletic; the feet beneath his sandals were thick with calluses, suggesting he frequently visited runner's tracks. His wavy hair was cut short and combed towards his brow, and was as black as the spaces between the stars. His deep blue eyes glittered with a hardness like ice._

_No, he was not frightened._

_Aemilius had jumped, too, but quickly he recovered himself, his teeth-gritting smile jerking upward into place. His voice was unnaturally high when he said, "Aemilius thanks you for coming."_

_I had never understood why our dealer chose to refer to himself as though he was speaking outside of his own body—and, if the lifting of his dark eyebrows was any indication, this man with the frigid eyes did not understand that either. I wished that I could shy away from those eyes; already I hoped that I would discover no more similarities between us than that one lack of comprehension._

"_Servius accepts your thanks."_

_The ice in his voice hit me just as I was swallowing, so that I choked slightly on my own saliva—the feeling, as I remember it now, is still unpleasant—and my heart began to pound as I could not catch my breath. Albanus thumped me once on the back, stimulating a cough, and as I hacked I looked up and was instantly ensnared by the gaze of the stranger._

_If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that my master did not hypnotize me that night, at least not in the way of our kind. My thoughts remained my own. And yet, in that moment, the sensation of cold drops of water running slowly down my back had returned. I knew I could not go home with this man. I also knew I had already been enthralled by those ice-like eyes. _(Nearly the same eyes that first attracted me to Eric_, some part of my mind whispers now, and dimly I can feel my body shuddering in the earth with the implications of what I felt.)_

_Caught in the depths of those terrible eyes, I drew a deep, rattling breath—in my mind I heard dead lungs rattling with me—_

_And coughed, and suddenly could breathe a little easier._

"_Which boy would you like me to show you first?" The slaver continued on as though I had merely cleared my throat, instead of nearly choking to death—how I almost wish I had!—and perhaps he had neglected to notice my plight, as he had done several times before._

"_That one." The customer answered without hesitation, nodding to me, as I already somehow knew then that he would, though I did not know then exactly how I had attracted his favor._

_Aemilius propelled me forward, his large palm on my back, presumably so that the client could not see his hand shake. "He is a Gaul, like the others." The name of the place meant nothing to me; still I have never dared to visit it for fear of attack by some terrible memory that might finally drive me to madness. "He is lately seven years old, a good age for serving, and perfectly healthy, although you can see a tooth that came in crooked here—" Aemilius briefly peeled back my lip to reveal my left outer incisor, one of the only permanent teeth I had at the time "—but I think it gives him a bit of charm, don't you?" The dealer was rambling now as he slipped my tunic over my head without prompting from his potential buyer; I dared not cover myself with my hands for fear of provoking them both into anger. "He will be a strong boy when he grows. Go on; feel his arm."_

_The man turned his awful gaze upon Aemilius, who wilted beneath it like a plant drained completely of its water. "Remove his makeup first. I came for a boy, not a painting."_

_Quickly and wordlessly the dealer rubbed away the powders on my cheeks and eyelids; he did so with his own palms, as though terrified his client would leave without purchasing any of us if he took the time to gather water and a cloth._

_A corner of the man's mouth lifted as he saw my true face, and goosebumps sprouted along my skin; they became a shiver as his palm and fingers wrapped around my upper arm._

_The feeling of his hand reflected the chill of his eyes._

_I sensed, as he felt the rest of me, that he was only doing so to patronize the slaver: he had already made his choice._

"_He is a little rebellious, but he has never left my sight." Aemilius was winding down now; the vigor that he had been caught up in during his extollment of my apparent virtues had left him. "He will be easily broken," he finished as his client stepped back, allowing him to dress me once more._

_Afterward he hesitated, and then said something I had never before heard from him: "Name your price."_

_The man looked me over once again, this time with only his frozen eyes. "Five hundred denarii."_

_The dealer must have blinked at the same time I did, for I did not see him do it. I was worth much more than either of us would have thought._

"_Done." Aemilius reluctantly shook the frigid hand of my master, releasing it quickly; their skin barely grazed when the man paid my full price in silver from the pouch at his waist._

_Neither Aemilius nor Albanus said goodbye to me as I was led away by a tight hand on my shoulder (it was freezing even through the cloth). I had not been so close to the other boys as to warrant a word of farewell from them either. Yet I was not glad to leave them, for that meant being alone with my new master._

_The reedy drone of a Greek _aulos_ reached my ears as we rounded a corner—the marketplace disappearing from view—though we traversed several more blocks before its source became apparent, drowning the slap of my master's sandals and my bare feet on the road's stone paving._

_A street performer stood on a corner of yet another intersection, the wooden pair of pipes extending outward from his lips in a small angle. My scalp prickled with the buzz of the reeds which disappeared into his mouth. The melody was familiar—though I still cannot recall where I heard it before this night—but I hid my smile, fearing the disapproval of those cold eyes._

_The fingers on my shoulder constricted, and we passed the musician without pause._

* * *

_By the time we reached the apartment building that was to be my new place of residence, I was thoroughly lost. I would find later that the streets of Rome were actually very well-organized, but this night I had become overwhelmed by the sheer number of them._

_The building was very tall, its brick exterior covered in a thick layer of cream-colored plaster. We approached a small door between two shops that had been secured with boards for the night; the doorman, apparently recognizing my master, waved us through without a second glance. We passed thorough a dark hallway to a set of stairs at the back of the building, which in turn led up to a sturdy brick walkway that wound around the building, connecting the levels of second- and third-floor apartments. I craned my head back, tracing the similar, rickety-looking wooden walkways connecting the floors above with my eyes._

_Without warning, a sharp _crack_ing sound reached my ears; my cheek lit with flame a second later._

_I stared up at my master, blinking, my eyes wet with unshed tears as he lowered his hand._

"_Keep up, or that will happen again."_

_I hurried after him as he strode along the walkway; his pace seemed unnaturally swift, and I was running by the time he stopped in front of a pair of double doors on the third floor landing. He removed a key from his money-pouch, its ring appearing just large enough to fit around his first finger, and unlocked the doors to my prison._

_They opened on the receiving room, which I would later find to be the largest room in an apartment that was relatively small for its cost. My master lit a few of the beeswax candles situated around the room after locking the doors to the outside world behind us—my hopes of escape had already fled—enabling me to better observe my surroundings._

_The walls were frescoed in solid colors—orange, red—overlaid with paintings of simple scenes. A servant waiting on his dining master caught my eye, and I assumed that to be one of my chief duties._

_How wrong I was._

_The furniture was relatively sparse: a wooden table and chairs near the back, and on the right, a low, round table made of marble. On that table rested a bronze plate far too pretty for dining on, positioned in front of a somewhat chipped statue of a woman that appeared to have been carved from marble. White cloth was suggested in the carving, wrapping around her intimate parts. Her arms were open as if to welcome someone into them. She was smiling, and her eyes were very kind._

_Because of the Lady, I would eventually develop a very dangerous belief that one day a woman would love me as her son, as Venus loved Cupid. But on this night, the compassion in her face merely captivated me._

_A cool hand suddenly gripped my chin; I stared up into a piercing gaze. "The gods may be the masters of the people," said the man who had bought me, "but _your_ most important bind is to me. You will call me Master, always."_

"_Yes, Master," I whispered, hoping the two words I had used were the correct ones, and something stirred in his face as another slap accompanied the release of my jaw._

_Master turned to the table with the Lady on it, and I saw that a goblet had been placed next to the plate; the plate now held a handful of almonds. Had Master placed them there while I had been staring at the Lady's statue? Surely I would have seen him do so... unless he moved with even more unnatural speed than I had seen on the walkway. I thought of Lycaon again, and swallowed._

_Master's tight hand led me to the altar. I stood motionless as he muttered what I would later learn to be ritual phrases: promises to view those around him with the eyes of the gods, requests for a blessing on himself and his work. He crushed the almonds in his fist, brushing their remains carefully onto the plate; I flinched at their crunching even as I stared at the display of his strength. Dipping two fingers into the goblet, he allowed the purplish liquid to drip from them onto the pile of nutty ashes._

_Wiping his fingers on a towel when he had finished, he turned one of the chairs at the larger table around so that it faced the altar, and, perching on its edge, beckoned me forward. When I stood before him, he gripped the back of my neck with one hand. He opened his mouth, lips twitching back from his teeth—_

_And a pair of incredibly sharp fangs appeared where his outer incisors had been with a fleshy _click_ing sound._

_I cried out, my spine burning at the neck with cold, flailing against him in my efforts to flee, but his hand held me fast._

_Master sank those terrible implements into his own wrist, and, his gaze never leaving mine, held the bloody wound up to my face, rubbing it against my mouth. "You must drink from me," he said as I felt the blood seep past my lips. I choked on its bitterness, but I could not help but swallow. "Now I will feel what you feel, and thereby know what you know. Your location in this world will never be hidden from me, so do not think of running away."_

_His arm was lowered after many swallows. I coughed, struggling to keep the crimson fluid in me for fear of his hand._

_His pointed smile was terrible._

"_On your knees."_

_I stared, uncomprehending, and he pressed downward on my neck; my legs folded beneath me, dropping me to the floor. He pulled my tunic off over my head, tossing it onto the table, and loosened the belt on his own._

_I began to contrive his final death that very night._


	3. The Soldier: Home At Last

**The Capital – Three Months Following the Attack on Eric's Camp**

"That'll be three asses."

"That'll be inflation," Gunnar muttered as Eric turned away from the fruit lady's stall; three copper coins had been exchanged for three pomegranates. He tossed a pomegranate each to Hrolf and Gunnar and began halving his own with a small bronze knife as they continued inching along the crowded streets. The once-white plaster coating the outer walls of the surrounding apartment buildings and shops bloomed a deep orange-red in the light of the late-afternoon sun.

The wind coaxed blossoms of varying sizes and shapes down from windowsills and stall counters; the petals were crushed beneath the travelers' sandaled feet, releasing a cloud of sweet smells and adding color to an already multihued city. Young women with long, coarse tunics caressing their full curves stood in the arched doorway of a floral shop, selling wreaths of violets and yellow narcissi that could be worn like crowns on the head; an older matron stood behind them, hands on her hips, to prevent them from being carried off by some rebellious soldier desperate for a quick lay. The spring festival honoring the goddess of flowers had coincided this year with the homecoming of the second auxiliary cavalry regiment to the thirteenth legion, and after so many years of near-celibacy, worshipping Flora by indulging in one of his basest instincts was sounding like a better and better idea to Eric by the second.

The sexual graffiti chalked over the apartments' walls—some partially hidden by the wood-and-cloth vendor's stalls in front of them—wasn't helping either. Men with women, women with women, men with adolescent boys... Eric had grown up with licentious symbols all around him—reaching up to touch the phallic wind chimes that hung over the doorway of his parents' house for luck was a treasured memory—and their presence often increased during the spring. But now there seemed to be even more lustful designs than usual...

Eric paused in his fruit-carving and reached out to a drawing of Priapus that was situated to the right of a doorway, running his thumb along the god's enlarged erection as he passed him by, and smiled when he felt his own groin stir. He had prayed urgently to Priapus, Bacchus and even Venus over the past few days, asking that his skill in the bedchamber not be diminished because of a general lack of practice. He was a good soldier; surely the gods would reward him for that?

"Ceres' teeth, I've missed these." Gunnar, his pomegranate successfully opened, sank his teeth amid the seeds. Juice ran down his chin in minute scarlet streams as the sound of the arils breaking between his molars was drowned out by the chatter of the crowd around them, and by the occasional street player with an aulos or a hand-drum. "Even if they are ridiculously overpriced."

"I daresay we've all missed just about anything that isn't bread," Hrolf agreed. Eric barely noticed how the man copied him exactly as they paused simultaneously in popping the seeds into their mouths to sidestep a beautiful chestnut mare being led over the stone slabs by a slave boy. (This boy was young, but then, _all_ male slaves were boys, really, no matter their age or potency.) Imitating your superiors, as Hrolf had done just now, was merely a part of the severe discipline which made the Empire's military so successful. Eric, Hrolf and Gunnar had been servants of this discipline for over fourteen years now, ever since they had become men at the age of sixteen, and discipline had long ago become instinct.

Discipline had also, unfortunately, decreed that Eric's sexual appetites be nearly starved to death, but it was best not to think about that at the moment. He would go home now, see his family. There would be plenty of time to play later.

Eric turned his head to watch the animal pass. Her elegant head drooped, as though the humidity was so thick in the air that she could raise it no higher, and her flanks were soaked with sweat. Eric's and his companions' mounts had already been stabled closer to an outer section of the city; there was little room for them here among the narrow alleys and the constant press of foot traffic.

Gunnar rolled his eyes toward the heavens, mouth still half-full. "The ever-merciful gods so help me, I am never eating bread again."

"You'll be wolfing down honeyed rolls again in a week, and you know it," grinned Eric, ducking away from the drippings of the laundry strung from building to building high above their heads.

Gunnar spat tiny flakes of pulp, tinged pink from the seeds' juices, onto the ground in response.

Seeing this, Hrolf smirked. "You know, I'm seriously beginning to think red was chosen as the color of the cloaks and tunics of our uniforms because of you and your messy eating habits." He easily ducked Gunnar's half-hearted punch before continuing, "It's a wonder you were allowed to be a soldier at all. You're a great fighter, but sometimes that discipline problem of yours is almost worse than Eric's—and that's saying something. What did you do—fuck Mars to get in?"

"That's good!" laughed Eric, clapping Hrolf on the shoulder. "Make that one into a story and tell it to Mother."

Gunnar, having taken another mouthful of seeds, made a muffled sound of protest as he shook his head; Eric decided to wait patiently until he could speak, and Hrolf evidently decided the same. "From what you've told us of her, I don't think she'd like it if you mocked the gods. I don't like it either. They might turn their backs on us, and then Trajan would be left in Parthia with no hope of winning the war."

"No, I suppose she wouldn't." Eric's lips pressed together into a thin line. "And then Father would say the three of us together murdered the emperor."

Hrolf snorted. "We're good, but not that good." His eyes took on a familiar, distant look as he said quietly, "Make a great tale though."

One pale brow lifted as Eric stepped over a bundle of sticks and rags curled up against the corner of a building. He didn't pause to see if the beggar was still alive. Destitute creatures like that had always existed, and as a young boy Eric had often wondered whether society could go on without them. It certainly couldn't without slaves. "I thought you liked the emperor."

"I do. Everybody does. This country's rarely been better than it is under him. The point is the story itself."

"Somehow I don't think he'd agree," Gunnar muttered, tossing the remains of his pomegranate in the direction of the beggar before turning to Eric, his face brightening. "You said Astrid had a girl?"

Eric felt his stomach quiver, suddenly finding himself unable to help smiling too. "Floriana—first in my family to be given a proper Roman name. Two months old now, by the date of yesterday's letter." He had bragged about her so many times already that the little addition to his family was old news to his brothers-in-arms, but Gunnar would do anything to divert the conversation from politics. Eric was glad he'd chosen this topic: he was in no way finished talking about the baby sister he would see for the first time today. "An early spring baby, just like her brother."

"I hope for her sake she doesn't look like you," Hrolf smirked.

"There's nothing wrong with a handsome woman—you make a very fine one." Eric dropped the husk of his pomegranate in the street—out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hrolf follow suit—before hefting the eighty-pound pack of standard gear higher up onto his shoulders, and quickened his pace.

Several shops owned by men and women of several races were left behind and several increasingly-narrow streets were traversed before they came to the house belonging to Eric's parents. Built in the old style, the house was tall and, with its red terra-cotta roof and cream-colored siding, resembled the apartment buildings situated to either side of it so much that only the double doors with bronze doorknobs and wolf's-head knockers indicated that Eric and his companions were not about to enter a first-floor shop.

A thickset slave with a receding hairline was guarding the doors to the house. His eyes widened for a moment at their approach, but soon relaxed as a look just shy of recognition filled his visage. "May I say that the war has been kind to you."

"Send for someone to tell my parents of my return." Eric dropped his gear at the entrance without another word, slipped through the door the slave held open for him, and continued on through the short entrance hall to the atrium. Eric had not recognized the man's face, but he must have been the replacement doorman another of Mother's letters had mentioned.

Eric had barely passed the floor mosaic in the hall—depicting a large, snarling black canine, with the words "Beware of Dog" beneath it, though to Eric's knowledge his family had never kept animals—before he was forced to suppress a smile: after fourteen years, he was finally home.

"Eric!"

The services of the small slave boy the doorman had sent hurrying toward Ulfrik's office were apparently unnecessary: the sound of Eric's voice had brought Mother rushing out of one of the many rooms branching off the brightly-frescoed walls of the house's central chamber. It was, of course, she who had called his name.

Pale yellow fluttered in the loose, light folds of her tunic and shawl as she walked quickly past the rectangular pool set in the center of the atrium—a collector of rainwater from the similar hole in the roof above—to embrace her son. Common women, like most men and slaves, were hung with cheap linen or wool to clothe them. But Astrid was draped in the finest silks, brought here all the way from China in caravans following trade routes hundreds of years old. Like her husband and son, her hair—pulled back into a coiled bun—was light, and the blue of her eyes was theirs also. There were small creases at the outer edges of those eyes now—Eric felt a jolting sensation in the pit of his stomach as he noticed them—but she was still beautiful.

She smiled when she drew back to look up into his face. "You're even taller than when you left, the gods be praised."

"I'll thank them later for the bump on the head I got ducking under the doorway," he smirked.

"It's thanks to Mars resting his hand on your father that we have a doorway here to duck under," she reminded him; her voice was always gentle, no matter the words that came from her mouth.

But how could Eric forget his father's accomplishments, which had been reiterated to him from the time he himself was first learning to speak? Ulfrik's service in an auxiliary regiment equal to Eric's had won citizenship both for himself and for his family upon his retirement. (Hrolf's and Gunnar's fathers had achieved citizenship for themselves and their families in similar manners.) This service was also one reason why Eric had wished to join the military when he came of age: such a career had a greater chance of bringing Eric himself glory than apprenticing himself to a man of common trade, or—the thought produced a slow burn in Eric's belly—following in his father's political footsteps.

"I praise Mars every day," Eric assured Mother dutifully. He never lied when he could help it, particularly on matters of faith. Both of these traits of his had long been encouraged by his mother.

But then Eric could not subdue the sudden grin that widened on his face as he asked her the question he had been waiting to vocalize for months: "Where is my sister?"

Mother's smile widened. "Nursing. The daughter of my body slave gave birth a few months before I did," she added, turning from his arms to call out, "Anthousa? Come show my son his new sister, please."

"Yes, my lady." A pretty slave with auburn hair, and who was perhaps ten years younger than Eric, followed the obeisance out from the same chamber Astrid had just left, cradling a bundle of richly-embroidered cloth. One sleeve of her tunic was slipping off her shoulder, as if she had hastily readjusted it to cover a breast swollen with milk. Eric found himself holding his breath against his will as she approached with that tiny collection of blankets—

And then Floriana was in his arms. She was a bit bigger than he'd expected, and her head was already covered with a sparse layer of fluffy, fair hair. Her large blue eyes were open, gazing at him as though she already knew him, and beneath her tiny nose a toothless grin stretched wide in response to his own.

"She's beautiful." Eric noticed an impossibly small hand poking out from her blankets, and placed his finger against the little palm on instinct. Her tiny digits curled around it as a quiet squeal emerged from her smiling mouth, and Eric chuckled.

Suddenly recalling Hrolf's teasing, Eric smirked over his shoulder at his companions. "And she _does_ look like me."

Appearing to take this as an invitation, his fellow soldiers moved closer to the miraculous little being in his arms.

Astrid, appearing to notice Hrolf and Gunnar for the first time, stepped forward at the same time they did—but her arms were half-raised, and Eric received the bizarre impression that she longed to reach out and snatch Floriana out from under their adoring gazes. "Who are they?"

"Friends, Mother," Eric soothed, smoothly hiding his own racing heartbeat with a calm tone. "They're fierce fighters, but they are loyal to me, and they would never hurt a child."

"Too afraid of Juno—most protective mother in the world," Hrolf laughed.

"Remember what I said about mocking the gods?" Gunnar muttered to him, before turning to Astrid with a slight smile. "Pardon our companion's coarseness, lady. We are merely men of the cavalry; we have not seen true society for some time, rendering _some of us_ a bit uncouth."

"Mm." Astrid folded her arms across her chest, appearing pacified. But her eyes never left Eric's companions, and as a result their glances at the baby were brief. Eric found himself almost glad of her instincts: he wanted his sister all to himself. Wanted to enjoy the sensation of her soft, tiny fist curled around his finger without someone gawking just over his shoulder. Wanted to watch her smile at him again and again—

"What are you doing home?"

Although he knew the question could have been uttered much more harshly, Eric's spine stiffened automatically as he lifted his head to regard his father. Ulfrik's smooth chin was held high above a tunic and toga that were chalked white and bordered with a red stripe: the marks of a senator. Eric saw that age had weathered his father's face as well, but this time suppressed a smirk, remembering an old argument between them: _I still have time to find a way to never grow old; you do not._

But right now the man standing before Eric was Ulfrik the senator, not Father—just as Mother could more rarely be Astrid the senator's wife—and so Eric must address him as such. If Floriana had still not been in Eric's arms, he might have given the man a mocking salute; he instead lifted his chin to match the senator's. "My company was given leave. We've filled the general coffers with half again as much gold in one shipment than Rome has seen from the spoils of war in awhile."

"You couldn't have given them twice as much?" Ulfrik was smiling slightly now—either Eric's answer or Astrid's disapproving _cluck_ of her tongue at the roughness of his first question appeared to have relaxed him—but long years of training wouldn't permit Eric to rest at ease. He was generally good at reading people's faces, but in this moment he had no idea exactly what that relaxed smile meant. He was so used to seeing expressions of aggression, and fear... and he had never responded well to threats.

"Perhaps next time," Eric answered finally, forcing a smile on his face for Mother's sake.

Floriana began to squirm in his arms, her little face twisting as though in preparation to utter some cry of discomfort, and Eric remembered that she had been called away from her meal. Still, he hesitated a moment before handing her back to the slave girl, who gave the child her finger to suck. His eyes didn't leave the crooning woman's back until she disappeared into the chamber whence they came.

"You must be hungry." The rigidity appeared to have fled Mother's body now that Floriana was out of the soldiers' sights; her naturally fluid movements were back as she turned to Hrolf and Gunnar and gestured grandly toward the kitchen. "I'll have the cook prepare a small platter of meat and bread for you—"

"They served with me, Mother," Eric interrupted quietly, suddenly resisting the urge to intimidate her with his height, as he might have done with an enemy. He was, he reminded himself, no longer in a place where he could be attacked at any moment. "They have each saved my life many times over, and have as much right to eat with us as any man who's ridden but an hour under the Eagle."

She searched his companion's eyes for a moment before returning her gaze to her son's, but said only, "If your father permits it."

Eric did not grind his teeth only by force of will. He had long enjoyed the life of a soldier, and recognized that obeying orders in that life often led to personal victories, but Ulfrik's permission was still not something for which he cared to ask. He looked to his father and waited, silent.

Ulfrik gazed around at them all, back straight, chin lifted, left arm clasping the drape of his toga to his abdomen. Eric might have called that posture aristocratic in another man—even in himself—but in Ulfrik the stance spoke merely of the head of his household.

Ulfrik looked from Hrolf to Eric to Gunnar and back once more; it was a moment before Eric realized his gaze had softened slightly, turning him into Father again. But, by that time, he had already turned away.

"Ariston has already begun preparing the fish bought this morning," Ulfrik said at last. "Flora's presence is all around us; we will honor her in our feast tonight."

* * *

Honeyed wine was poured by the assistants to the cook (also slaves) in the hour before the first course was brought out—slices of fire-toasted bread spread with ricotta cheese and garlic—and Eric had begun to find relaxation much easier than anticipated as he reclined on his white dining couch. Like the others, he lay on his side, with his left elbow resting on a pillow. He was dressed in a clean beige tunic; his feet had been washed and were now bare. Slaves, male and female, stood just outside the circle of couches, ready to come forward with a small bowl of water and a cloth should any of the diners need to clean their fingers or wipe their faces. Another slave sat apart from them on a stool in a corner, her fingertips dancing softly around the strings of a lyre.

Few of the house's rooms possessed windows, but the bright paintings of songbirds perched in lemon and fig trees on the walls helped to reflect the light flickering in the cylindrical bronze lanterns that hung from the ceiling, and the dim glow also helped to increase Eric's sense of homecoming. He and his family had passed by the several bedchambers branching off the atrium and walked through the house's large, columnaded garden to reach this room, and the sight of each had been pleasing to Eric.

He was home now, and in this moment his past quarrels with his father were of no concern to him. He had no reason to prove anything to Ulfrik.

"Did you see any of the Fair Ones during your travels?"

Eric swallowed a smile as the question brought him out of his reverie; he had known the inquiry would be coming. If one of Mother's acquaintances was said to have seen the consorts of the gods dancing in her garden, then she would talk of nothing else for a month. "I'm afraid we saw no nymphs, Mother."

But then the image of a dusty road slicing through a dark field rose in his mind, and he struggled to keep his tone light as he asked, "Are there any... Evil Ones?"

"I wouldn't think so." Her eyes, formerly gleaming with devout hope, were now intently searching his face. "But you think you saw one."

If Eric had still been the boy that had joined the Roman military those long years ago, there might have been a very small part of him that was unable to return her gaze. But that boy had grown up.

Eric nodded. "We were perhaps half a dozen weeks away from home—"

"Wow," Gunnar muttered to Hrolf, "story time from Eric? He _must_ be worried."

Eric turned a half-hearted glare on Gunnar from across the circle. Only the friends and family dining in this room—and, perhaps someday, Floriana too—could get away with interrupting him. "Do we carry on conversations when Hrolf is spinning tales?"

"Yes," Hrolf muttered darkly, and everyone laughed.

"As I was saying," Eric continued with another glare at his friends, "Hrolf and I had recently estimated we would have only about six weeks or so left before we would reach the Capital. We were traveling down a wide, dusty road that cut through some sort of... farming community. The moon was already rising, but I wanted to go another hour or two before stopping for the night, as long as our torches held out.

"I was riding at the head of the company, of course, on that bay stallion named Arion, who I believe I mentioned in a letter after I bought him four years ago. Yes," Eric said, smiling when Astrid opened her mouth, "I'll take you to see him soon, I promise. He's a good horse." She settled back onto her couch, appearing satisfied, reaching over to take her husband's hand as Eric went on with his explanation.

"We had stopped by one of the villages occupied by our military during the day, to replenish our supplies. I no longer remember what I had been thinking about that evening, but it must have had something to do with that place, because when Gunnar pointed out that there was something in the middle of the road ahead of us, I couldn't see what he was talking about.

"Arion, more sensible than I was, had already come to a halt. His ears were moving in that way that horses' ears do when they're nervous, and the sound of his snorting made me realize how quiet it suddenly was. Soldiers make a lot of noise on the road: even when we aren't talking, our animals are. But Arion, one of the only mounts close enough to see what was in the road clearly, was the only one with a voice.

"I patted his neck, striving to calm him so I could lean forward to get a better look at the thing in the road without having to worry about him spooking and throwing me off.

"When I did identify what Gunnar had been trying to alert me to," Eric felt his jaw tighten, "I immediately wished I hadn't.

"An old man in a traveling cloak lay sprawled on the earth just inside the circle of our torchlight, his face obscured by a sheet of very long, dark hair. A woman dressed in rags was lying nearly on her belly on his far side, her face buried in his throat—" Eric looked quickly to his mother, wondering if he should persist in telling the tale. Her knuckles were very white, she was gripping Father's hand so hard, but she nodded at Eric all the same.

"My decision was made in seconds. I knew nothing of what this woman was doing, but I also knew that no elderly Roman citizen deserved to be the victim of such obvious brutality. I dismounted as quietly and slowly as I could, and Gunnar handed me his spear.

"The woman's head jerked up without warning, and she stared at us. I'll never forget how bestial she looked. It wasn't just the blood on her face, it was her expression—as though any humanity she once possessed had long been lost. What was even stranger was that she possessed fangs, one on either side of her two foremost teeth on the top, which made her look even more like some sort of predatory animal.

"Arion reared next to me, screaming in the way horses can scream, his eyes rolling. I heard the donkeys and the rest of the horses screaming too. I sent my spear to flight almost without looking at my target before hurrying to try to calm Arion, fearing he would bolt. It was a difficult thing to do, because I needed to be certain I could leap safely out of the way if he did decide to run off.

"We eventually did calm all our animals. Luckily, no one of us had been hurt. Hrolf, Gunnar and I approached the old man, but he was obviously dead. I found my spear just outside the glow of our torches. There was no blood on it at all. And that strange woman was long gone."

Eric sighed as he finished his tale, closing his eyes for a brief moment. His head—every muscle in his body—was tired.

"Did anyone else see the teeth that woman had?" Ulfrik's tone made him open his eyes: it was almost gentle, curious now, not skeptical, as it might once have been.

Eric looked to his companions and lifted an eyebrow.

"... I... might have," Hrolf said after a moment, sounding unsure of his answer.

"It was very dark," Gunnar agreed. Was the look he gave apologetic? In this moment, Eric was hard-pressed to tell.

Eric leaned forward slightly, heat building in the pit of his stomach to reinvigorate his mind and body. "I know what I saw."

"Perhaps my son has had too much to drink, and this has affected his memory." Ulfrik was smiling slightly now—but the look Astrid gave him before she said, "I believe you," to her son in her quiet way straightened out her husband's expression. He squeezed her hand as if in apology.

It was difficult to return Father's smile, but Eric, thinking of his mother's answer, did so as he settled back onto his couch. "If I am to be accused of drunkenness, I might as well justify it. I was thinking of going into town tonight anyway. It's been a long time since the three of us have gotten the chance to enjoy such, ah... _boisterous_ festivities.

"However," he continued at another thought, "there is one matter I would like you to look into tomorrow. That boy you have at the door is the most incompetent guard I've ever seen—he didn't even ask our names before admitting us into the house! Hrolf and Gunnar could do much better," Eric finished offhandedly.

He bore his father's gaze with a practiced expression of patience for several seconds before Ulfrik finally sighed. "They can display their skills for me tomorrow morning. But keep in mind while you're enjoying yourselves tonight that I want the three of you to be conscious enough to fight tomorrow, _really_ fight, understand?" He gave the three of them his severe senator's expression.

"Yes, sir," Hrolf and Gunnar said in unison, and Eric couldn't keep the grin off his face.


	4. The Slave: Neptune

I made an effort to use the crowd to put distance between myself and Eric as I followed him through the streets of Rome. I was perhaps ten feet away from him, and yet my blood was pounding in my veins so fiercely I feared he would hear it and look back at me. I had never been so close to the decurio, in all those months that I followed him—nor to the two men whom I had learned were his most constant companions. They walked at his side, joking with him and each other.

"That pleb over there looks as though he's had one too many drinks."

"You're one to talk."

"His wife would probably be happy if we arrested him before he passed out."

Despite Eric's answering laughter, I soon found my attention wandering from their remarks, to when I had risen for the night, earlier this evening. I had cleaned myself and my tunic of dirt and blood as best as I was able in a small stream in the woods that had been my resting place. Then I had followed the tracks of Eric's company from the countryside surrounding the Capital—which I recognized a little, but not enough to trust an estimated century-and-a-half-old memory to guide me—to the borders of the city itself. There, the streets were worn by so many passings of feet and wheels that there was no way to identify particular impressions in the rock, and so I had begun to listen for Eric's voice as my eyes sought my beautiful prey.

I had found him as he was accepting a drink from a young woman with dark, curly hair. (Her wine stand, I could not help noticing, was positioned in front of a statue of a laughing satyr—an appropriate juxtaposition for servants of the god of drunkenness.) The only addition to Eric's armor from when I had last seen him the night before was that his belt now also carried a small pouch that jingled with coins.

"I think I'm going to visit the baths." Eric's statement, so abruptly serious after their lighthearted exchanges, lifted me from my reverie with a swooping sensation felt deep in my core. Did he know he was being followed?

The eyebrows of the dark-haired man—as with most humans, I never bothered to learn the names of Eric's companions—drew together. "Are they even open this late?"

Eric smirked, quirking his own pale brows in response and passing the cheap, clay goblet he had been drinking from to the dark man, who drained it almost immediately. "One way to find out. You coming?"

"I was going to visit a brothel. I'm surprised you weren't thinking of the same."

"I was hoping to find someone with a bit more... _class_ to spend the night will. Someone who actually cares whether my loins are dirty or not," Eric smirked.

The dark-haired man shrugged, turning to their companion with a long-faced expression that I gathered was supposed to inspire pity. "Are you going to leave me to face all of those lustful women alone?"

The fair-haired soldier whose name I had neglected to learn laughed. "Certainly not. Have fun with yourself, Eric."

Eric and his companions parted at another intersection, and I followed the decurio down the left-hand alley. Our way was sparsely lit by torches; I enjoyed the way their light played off the gold of his hair.

Soon we came to one of the few buildings housing public baths that were actually of impressive size. What little roof I could see was supported by great, curving domes and arches, and pillars whose capitals were carved with the ornate, Corinthian likenesses of plants.

I increased the distance between myself and the decurio as we approached that magnificent structure, my stomach fluttering at the thought of being noticed by him in this place. Under Master's tyranny, several men had seen my nude form and taken advantage of it. But, now that I had the opportunity to be willingly clad in only my skin in the presence of someone I cared about, I could not help pondering the consequences of such a situation. I had been branded as a child, scarred repeatedly with ink against my will, and I did not know if Eric, given the penchant for pretty things I had noticed he possessed while following him all these months, would find my body attractive.

And, more importantly, would he be willing to look past the dangerousness of what I was, look past what I had done, in order to know who I was?

Eric approached a slave standing under an arch that was obviously the building's main entrance, a lion's lazy confidence in every long stride. How I wished I could walk like that! "Are the baths still open?"

The white-haired man nodded. "All night—just this week, though, for the festival and all." He waved Eric through without asking for a coin—both of us, as a soldier and a slave, would be able to use the baths for free—and the decurio swept along into the shadows cast by the pillars.

Even as I passed the doorman and followed Eric's progress through the rooms with my feet and the corner of my eye, the majority of my darting attentions were taken up by the splendor around me.

The greater part of the floor of first room we came to was taken up by a large pool that, given its proximity to the entrance and the lack of steam hovering over the water, would probably have been used for recreational swimming. Each large floor tile around the pool's border was decorated with a pattern of clams and spined fish, and bordered by straight black lines.

I turned and followed Eric down a long portico lined with Corinthian pillars inlaid with yellow marble. (I wished the moonlight were bright enough for him to observe their beauty. But, after noting that he walked through this place with barely a glance at his surroundings, I deduced that Eric had been here many times before, and had grown desensitized to the building's grandeur.) The portico lined two spacious rooms, both floors covered with sand, and deducing by the scuffle of footprints those were probably used for wrestling or some other sport.

We turned down another hallway, this one lined with doors. He walked nearly to the end before entering a door on the right. I could only make myself wait around half a minute before following him.

"—ahead and get those buckles on the other side," said the decurio as I pushed open the door. A short man with red hair—a color I had not seen in a long time outside of my nourishment and soldiers' garments—was helping Eric undress. The decurio's cloak had already been tucked up into a little niche in the wall for tucking clothes in that was just above my eye level; it ran the length of the room, along with a pair of white marble benches—

Eric looked up as I shut the door behind me, and my blood pulsed. I lowered my eyes before his could meet them, fearing some uncontrollable reaction on my part more than recognition on his, and perched on the edge of the bench across the room from him.

A mosaic depicting Neptune, holding his trident and riding a large horse that possessed a fish's tail, covered the floor in the form of asymmetrical pieces of blue and green glass. I followed its patterns with my eyes as my fingers slowly undid the ties on the sandals I had stolen from a man I had drained the night before—and as my ears strove to ignore the whisper of cloth being freed from skin...

"That will be all." I heard the decurio's familiar footsteps cross the room—I shivered when the air was disturbed by his passing before me—and out the door at the other end of the chamber.

There was the sound of cloth rustling, even after he was gone, and I was not certain whether it was imagined.

I knew, however, that it felt as though an age had passed before I found the courage to look up—and saw that the red-haired slave was nearly to the door that opened onto the hallway, Eric's money-pouch clutched in his hand.

Fire shot through my veins; my fangs itched to drop. How _dare_ this man steal from a soldier, from Eric!

Thinking quickly, I tackled the man to the floor in a blur of quiet speed. I scented blood on impact, and nearly smiled when I looked down and saw that his forehead, hands and knees had been cut open by the floor: these injuries, coupled with the man's dazed expression, would save me from the questions hypnotizing him might burden me with.

I pried his fingers from the pouch and stood, jerking the man to his feet by the back of his tunic. I propelled him forward by a tight grip on his shoulder—I noted with a grimace that we were nearly of a height—and through the door that Eric had recently employed.

I noticed three things very quickly: one, that the room was large; two, that its pool was circular; and three, that a completely naked Eric was standing by the edge of that pool, turned halfway toward us. Even devoid of his armor, he was a broad man, and as I had guessed upon my first sight of him all those months ago, his skin was almost completely supported by muscle. These appeared slightly twisted in the side of his torso that was facing us, from just above the buttock to beneath his arm, relaxing in response to the stretching that his muscles were surely doing on his other side.

His shoulders, his chest, his thighs—everything was perfectly formed.

He, standing there beside the pool, would make an excellent Neptune.

I could not imagine how the gods might have created a being more beautiful than Eric.

And then I was again renewed in the decision that he should be my child, for even as I had just burst through the door with a bleeding man in my grasp, Eric's response was only to lift an eyebrow.

Warmth for him flowed through me, and it was a moment before I could speak. "I—" I softly cleared a throat gone abruptly coarse "—I beg your pardon." I held Eric's bag out to him, shoving the slave to the floor with the hand that had held him captive. "This man was attempting to steal your coin."

Eric's jaw tightened as he walked toward us—that my gaze remained on his face took all of my will—and he jerked the slave to his feet just as roughly as I had. "Who is your master?"

The slave had become nearly as pale as I was as Eric towered over him. His answer was whispered: "Decimus Drusus."

"Tell him he will have a senator's word and a soldier's blade to fear if anyone who works for him is caught stealing again." Eric shoved the man toward the door; the slave slipped on the floor but quickly regained his balance on the way out.

My attentions returned to Eric once more, and my stomach jolted as I saw that he was appraising me, his eyes slowly ascending my body as though they could peel away my tunic to reveal the flesh beneath. "Thank you," he began slowly, and my blood thumped, "is not something I say very often, but in this case I will say so gladly." He took the pouch from me, his movements gradual, and I was certain it was no accident when his fingers brushed my palm and left a trail of gentle flame in their wake.

I trembled—never, never had I been touched so kindly in all my life!—and trembled again when the corners of his eyes crinkled at my reaction to his touch. Slowly he reached up and trailed the backs of his fingers down my cheek; I felt a warm stirring beneath my tunic even as I struggled to keep my eyes open.

"What is your name?" His breath was light on my face, and I named Eric's scent for the first time: leather, and horses, and wine, and musk.

"Godric." My response was barely above a whisper.

"Will you swim with me, Godric?"

"_Yes._" My blood was pulsing so hard at the sound of my name on his lips that it was several seconds before I realized that my answer more nearly resembled a whimper of ecstasy. "Yes," I said again, and when I was able to open my eyes fully his back was to me; I watched the muscles ripple through it, all the way to the base of his firm buttocks, as he slipped into the water with the faintest of splashes. The little bag was now set next to a bar of soap and a woolen towel.

I approached the edge of the pool, walking over tiles patterned with nesting squares in varying shades of blue, and hesitated. Now that the moment had come, despite the pleasure that still ran rampant through my veins at his touch, I found I could not yet reveal myself to him so completely.

Without warning, he dove forward into the water, submerging himself completely, and surfaced a moment later, spitting water from his mouth in a long arc like a fountain, laughing as he shook the drops from his face. When he saw me, the barest hint of a smirk played with a corner of his mouth, but his eyes were kind. "Change your mind?"

"Somewhat." I lowered myself carefully to the basin's edge, sinking my feet and calves into the water; the surface lapped just below my knees. My hands, fingers interlocked, came to rest in my lap. "I'm surprised you didn't attack that man: from the expression on your face when you came up to him, I thought you were about to."

He was certainly smirking now. "I decided the energy I might have spent on him could be employed for someone else."

The blood rose to just beneath my surface at the implication in his words, and for awhile all was quiet between us.

I took the opportunity to complete the observations of my surroundings that I had begun earlier. The walls were high, with wide windows near the top, capped by a large dome. A hundred stories were frescoed onto those walls: Neptune creating the first horses, Jove taking the youth Ganymede as his lover, Pluto convincing Proserpina to eat three pomegranate seeds and thereby live with him in the underworld... Rays of moonlight stepped down from the windows and through the air to dance with those stories on the water.

"Who is your master? Assuming by your clothing, of course, that you are a slave."

I could smell the tallow and wood ashes in the soap that Eric was using to work up a lather across his chest, and silently I thanked him, because without such a distraction the sensation of compression in my own chest that had occurred at his inquiry would have been much harder to bear. "He was killed many years ago. I am glad of this fact, though even the thought of my tongue and lips forming his name brings a bad taste into my mouth. I have never spoken his name aloud, and I... I find that I cannot speak it now, even to you." My voice had fallen to a whisper by the time I had finished. I dropped my gaze to my hands, twisting around one-another in my lap, my blood in flames at the thought that Master's memory was ruining my first moments with Eric—as I almost knew it would.

The brand on the back of my right shoulder itched and burned.

There was the sound of water lapping quietly against skin. I watched the surface bob and dip around his lower belly as he came towards me, and again I was reminded of the god of the sea.

When he placed the soap into my palms, the contact of our skin was like a balm.

"I..." His throat bobbed when he swallowed, his eyes darting; for a moment I fancied they were searching for an apology, as though Eric could grab one out of thin air. "Would you like to lather me up?"

I smiled: the offer, coming from him, was apology enough for me. "May I see your back?"

His grin, unfortunately, disappeared from my view as he turned around. But the broad, thick muscles of his back were in its place, covered by a wide swathe of skin that was entirely free of blemishes, and so complaint was the last thing on my mind.

I had never seen such a beautiful back.

"See anything you like?" The pride he held in his athletic condition was obvious in his voice as looked back over his own shoulder at me.

My tongue traced my lips as I followed shoulder blades and spine, down and down, to the water's surface. "Yes."

That grin again. "Good."

I rubbed the soap between my hands, covering them with lather, and began to rub my palms across the skin of his back. I cannot describe the sensation accurately, for it was comprised of countless elements: beneath the tingling of my palms, the epidermis was soft and rough, smooth and resistant, defined... It was wonderful to touch a back that had never been ridged with burn marks or pricked with an inked needle until it bled. I sat there, stroking his spine over and over and over again, blinking and smiling like a fool.

The lift of a pale brow pulled me from the soothing rhythm. "I know I have an impressive back, but you seem particularly fascinated."

I felt my smile falter as my chest tightened. "I—I promise I will show you another time, but... not tonight. Please."

His brow had furrowed. "Your master...?"

I nodded, for the moment unable to speak.

Gradually, the grin returned as he turned to face me. "Continue?"

It was a different experience to run my hands along his brawny arms, to rework the lather on his chest, to cover the hardness of his belly with the slick material... My work was swept away by my imagination. My breathing sped up to match the hot, stiff pulse between my thighs. When they opened, the skin of them sang with joy when Eric stepped between them, pressing his chest against my palms with greater force. The tip of his nose dragged along my neck as he began to press the lightest of kisses along its length. My hips twitched, yearning to rock against him. My head fell back as a soft breath fell from my mouth, and I forgot myself, and my fangs dropped.

I felt him flinch at the click—it was natural for him not to expect a sound I had grown so used to—but when he drew back I did not expect his eyes to widen, almost as though in recognition. I did not expect his hands to curl into fists at his sides, as though they might rise and strike me.

"You're like that woman in the road." His words, nonsensical to me, brimmed with venom, and the look in his eyes was worse than when he had discovered he had nearly been robbed. One fist moved toward my face—

And I caught his wrists even as my heart shriveled and he struggled against my grip. His eyes were wide, his mouth twisted, and I thought of the horses in his camp and shivered. "Eric, please—I would never hurt you. I don't know who that woman you're talking about is. I have no friends who are as I am—no acquaintances at all, to love you or harm you, among any kind. I was given these implements that frighten you, was made what I am now, against my will. I was human once. I would never hurt you."

Eric stared back at me, his gaze unreadable. "Then let me go so I can think!"

My fingers sprang open, and he stepped back from me. I retracted my fangs, tucking them away up against the roof of my mouth, so that his reaction to their presence might not be renewed. He paced in the water, his movements impeded by its resistance, but still I could not deny their power.

"She was drinking a man's blood. She had killed an old man and was drinking his blood. Who does that to the elderly?" He threw the question at me without looking at me, and it was a moment before I realized he expected an answer.

"We must drink the blood of humans to survive. Some find the elderly... easy prey." I winced, inexplicably wishing I did not have the life I had accepted as my lot, but at least he saw my expression and knew I did not approve of this unknown woman's choice of prey. I had always respected the elderly for their knowledge, and in the few conscious moments I had during the bestial hunt, I strove to avoid drinking them to death.

I neglected to add that I also did not approve of the woman's choice to feed in a place where she could have been seen by humans—that, I sensed, Eric would not forgive.

After a long moment, Eric sighed heavily and turned to face me. "I cannot say that I cannot trust you, because you stopped a man who could have taken my finances and possibly my life from me, unlikely as that second action might be. I recognize that sometimes you may be forced to take the life of an older person in order to ensure your own survival; I have done it myself. I also recognize that, if those teeth and your strength are any indication, you might be a powerful ally. Therefore, I will strike an agreement with you: if you swear never to harm my family or acquaintances, I will be a companion to you, and you to me."

"I swear." My voice was clear and level, and I held his eye as I said the words. I had learned from watching him that Eric was an honest man, and I would not break my word to him either.

He held out his hand to me, and I shook it, my palm tingling against his.

"Are there any advantages to... what you are?" He splashed water up against his chest and belly, allowing it to trickle down his skin and take the soap with it, although his eyes never left me for long. "I have never heard stories of your kind."

"Yes." I continued to watch him as I spoke. "We grow faster and stronger as we age—much faster and stronger than any human. We heal very quickly. We have an excellent sense of smell. We can hypnotize humans, make them forget we were ever around them—but I would never do that to you or your family," I added hastily at his look. "I have had some... bad experiences with that myself, when I was just a child." His eyes softened, and I allowed myself a moment of looking into them before finishing, "And we can see very well at night..." I realized I was staring at the place where his belly met the water, and jerked my gaze away hastily.

I heard him chuckle quietly. "I wish I could see so well at night—that would certainly come in handy for me." The seduction of his tone brought my gaze back to eyes that were once again kind. "And the strength and speed wouldn't hurt either." His brow furrowed. "You may not want to talk about this, and I can understand if you don't, but... do you have any weaknesses?"

I searched his eyes and all of my past experiences at once, and when I had deemed my course of action to hold less risk than it otherwise could have, I said, "If you will promise me never to reveal these things to anyone, unless I allow you to with words from my own mouth, I will tell you."

"I promise." He held my gaze, as I had his, and I was warm.

"Garlic is an irritant, but it is not life-threatening. Silver is extremely painful, and can be used to kill us in certain ways. Decapitation or a piece of pointed wood through the heart will bring immediate death, and the sun or fire will bring a slow one." My voice grew coarse as I finished, not only because I missed the sun's light and warmth, but also because of the realization that I would never experience that light and warmth with Eric.

He was quiet for a moment, but when he spoke, my pain was weakened and reflected back at me. "How long has it been since you've seen the sun?"

"One hundred and forty-three years." There was no need to ponder it: I knew the number exactly. "I was fifteen when my human life ended."

I watched him do the figures in his mind. "You were alive before Julius Caesar was assassinated?"

I nodded. "A slave trader told my master on the night I was sold that I had been captured in Gaul, though that name and Caesar's raids of that place mean little to me. I do not remember much of what happened the night before I became a slave."

"How old were you, when you were sold?"

"I was seven."

He swallowed, blinking three times in rapid succession, and my heart ached for him. He saw slavery every day of his life—his family probably owned slaves, if someone he knew was indeed a senator—and this silent admission that he felt pity for me meant more to me than I could tell him.

"I was much younger than that when we moved here to the Capital from a place just south of Germania," Eric offered. "My father was a decurio, as I am now, and he won us citizenship."

"I _knew_ you were a decurio!" I began to babble like a little boy in my excitement, scarcely noticing Eric's raised eyebrows. "I came upon your camp one night while I was hunting a few months ago, and saw you in your armor. You were attacked by fools. You cannot know what I felt when I saw you fight—in all my years, I've never seen anyone fight like you! I've always been amazed at our country's army, and so I began following you—" I broke off, realizing what I had said, and focused on Eric's face, fearing he would be angry with me.

But there were only those raised eyebrows, now accompanied by a low whistle. "I knew someone was following me tonight, but I wouldn't have thought someone could follow me for _three months_ without my knowledge. We could use you in the company."

I smiled, my gaze lowering. "That has been my greatest wish, ever since I was a child, but now it can never be fulfilled."

His fingers touched my arm, and I looked up to gentle eyes. "I wish that too." Then he looked down at his hand on my arm, his brow furrowing. "Why is your skin so cold?"

"Did you notice it when we first touched, when I returned your valuables to you?"

He nodded.

"Our skin is cold because, in the process of changing from a human to what we our now, our hearts stop beating. The blood that flows through me does not warm me, as yours does."

"So, because your heart doesn't beat, are you... dead?"

"For all intents and purposes, yes."

His eyes held mine. "I'm not wrong for wanting to couple with you despite that." The certainty in his voice was beautiful.

"No." I smiled, taking his large hands in mine. "You're human."

"This doesn't mean you get to treat me like a child, just because you're older than me." He was grinning now.

I laughed. "I will try to respect your physical age over me."

We were again quiet for a moment. My eyes found the picture of Neptune's creation of horses once again. "You know, when I first saw you in this room, standing beside the water, I thought you resembled Neptune."

Beside me, his shoulders straightened. "I'm not surprised. Everyone thinks I'm a god."

I laughed again. "You certainly have a god's arrogance!"

"Of course I do." He moved out into the middle of the pool, diving and resurfacing again and again to get the last of the soap off.

I had just begun counting the square impressions on the inner surface of the dome above us—a child's curiosity is varied, and never satisfied—when I felt two large hands wrap around my ankles. I cried out just before I was pulled under the water.

I opened my eyes beneath the surface. Eric was laughing at me, great bubbles floating upward from his mouth. Then, apparently realizing he had run out of air, he kicked towards the surface. I noted that the floor tiles here at the bottom of the pool matched those above before following him.

Instinct caused me to draw in a lungful of air as I broke the surface. Panting, I wiped the water from my face—a difficult thing to do with wet hands.

Eric nodded at my soaked tunic, still chuckling. "Surely you won't be cold?"

I shook my head, smiling again. "Just wet." I clambered out to sit on the edge of the basin again.

I watched Eric lean back to float on the water. Every inch of him was slick. I trembled.

His eyes were closed; his lips were curved slightly upward. "I _will _respect your unfortunate sense of modesty, you know, if you want to wring out your clothes."

My lips flickering in and out of a smile, I stood quickly, pulling my tunic over my head and wringing it out over the edge of the water. I focused on twisting the fabric between my hands, all too aware of the fact that we were both naked now. My blood throbbed with need. I donned my damp tunic, and stood for a moment with my back to Eric, my hands curled into fists at my sides as I stared, hard, up at a dimple in the plaster high on the wall. It seemed an eternity before my desire cooled and I could sit on the edge of the pool again.

"You adhere to a soldier's discipline." Eric came to stand beside me once more, resting his hand on my wrist. "How long has it been since you've had sex?"

I traced the rises and dips of his knuckles with my eyes; I could not meet his gaze. "I was taken advantage of many times, when I was a slave, but I have never lain with a man of my own free will. Even with you, still in many aspects a stranger... the idea is... frightening."

"Have you had a woman?"

"I do not feel desire for them."

Gentle fingers lifted my chin, and my gaze was lifted to a smiling face. "I'll be here on leave for at least a few weeks—certainly plenty of time to get to know me." His voice dropped, seductive. "I certainly want to get to know you."

My tongue crossed my lips.

The backs of Eric's fingers were again brushing my cheek; my eyes closed. "I will be gentle with you. I swear it." His breath was warm on my face. "There is no bedmate better than me. I can teach you to love sex, as Venus originally intended. You will beg me to never stop."

"My body has pleaded with you since the night I first saw you." I opened my eyes. "Please, give me a few nights to... prepare myself. We could meet in that time; talk more. I have not been in the Capital since the night my master died, and I have never really been able to enjoy our festivals. I would very much like to explore them with you."

He grinned. "I have plans for the next few nights, then. I was afraid I'd be bored."

I picked up one of his hands, tracing the wrinkled fingertips. "Should you get out of the water?"

"Probably." He did so. "Your skin doesn't wrinkle after a while in the water?"

I shook my head "—Not anymore—" and stood with him, and watched the water drip from his skin...

He smirked, his gaze piercing me to my core. "Did you want to dry me off?"

I swallowed, and wondered how it would feel to touch the place of his pleasure with only a thin layer of cloth between us.

Master's memory whispered: _Whore_.

I shook my head quickly. "I'll lay out your armor for you." I hurried back into the cloakroom—thankfully empty now—and ensured that every piece of Eric's armor was present, laying them out along one of the benches.

I heard Eric come in behind me a minute later, but I resisted looking at him until he was covered by his tunic.

He clapped me on the shoulder; I flinched; his thumb rubbed an apology.

"Your master is dead," he said quietly. "You can make your own choices now. And I would like you to choose to help me put on my armor."

I swallowed, but once I received no internal protest I was quick to nod. I had only previously explored the workings of a soldier's gear on dead men; helping a living soldier dress was a dream I never thought I would see realized.

The process, when it began, was almost as wonderful as feeling the decurio's unblemished back. I slipped the sandals onto his callused feet, cupping his heels and tracing the contours of the soles, holding them in my hands far more briefly than I wished too, lest I overbalance him. Once those had been done up, I tied his purse and sword to his belt, holding the latter in my hands and admiring its weight and beauty. I placed the cuirass around his torso and fastened the buckles, following Eric's explanations of their arrangement and order without comment. I swept the soft cloak around his shoulders, clasping the brooches that held it on the cuirass, rearranging the folds so that they lay just right.

Something in my expression as I was working must have amused him, for when I looked up into his eyes once I had finished, he was smiling. "Can you smell my family on my clothing, like a dog?"

I laughed. "Yes, but I would rather not be compared to a dog, thank you." I pressed a fold of his cloak to my nose, exaggerating the inhalation slightly so that he could hear it, and committed the scents that stood out to memory: flowers, clothing dyes, and slightly soured milk were among them.

I followed a god out of the cloakroom, up the hallway and the portico lining the sporting rooms, and out the front entrance to the bath house. If my tunic was still wet, the doorman gave no notice of it, and I did not register it either. All I saw was Eric's back, as I had seen it so many times in the past few months, but now I saw it knowing its owner was most certainly of my presence.

I stopped after we had put a few streets between us and the baths, and Eric turned to me, brow lifted.

My hands twisted at my waist. "You should probably get some sleep. Humans aren't meant to be awake all night."

"I've had to be before." But then he yawned, his mouth opening wider than I had once estimated from a distance. I stared at his pink tongue, his white teeth. "But I think you're right. It would be more difficult to seduce you half-asleep."

I laughed. "You would know more than I. Where would you like to meet tomorrow evening?"

"I gather you saw the wine vendor in front of the satyr statue while you were following me tonight?"

I nodded. "That will be a good place." I hesitated for a moment. I had seen humans wish each other good night in varying ways over the centuries; I was unsure what he would like, what he would expect. "How should I wish you good night?"

The decurio leaned forward then, slowly, and pressed a soft kiss to my cheek. His fingers twitched at his sides, as though yearning to touch me again. My blood sang. "Just like that. Good night, Godric." He turned, and I watched him until he rounded a corner, and I could see him no more.


	5. The Memorial: The Burning

_The state of being bound with ropes that chafed my wrists and ankles was a condition with which I was very familiar by the time I had been Master's property for five months. Though our door was always locked during the day, Master persisted in tying me up before he went to bed, just before dawn, in the only room in the apartment that possessed no windows. (As in most apartments, the major chambers were lined along an outer wall of the building, so that they might catch as much sunlight as possible.) Aside from being a prevention of my somehow locating the key to the front door of the receiving room and escaping, this trussing of my person was, I had learned, only one of Master's many pleasures._

_I rested my head against the wall, my mouth twisting at the screams of my neck and shoulders, muffling the cries that might have fled through my lips._

_I only ever left the house in Master's company, and two nights ago I thought we were merely making a trip to the market, to buy a week's meager supply of food for myself. But those streets that had just begun to appear familiar to me had instead been avoided, in turn for those that led to a small, dark shop overflowing with the pungency of ink._

_Master had removed my tunic and forced me, facedown, onto a table. "He is a freedman," Master, knowing full well that my comprehension of the language he spoke was increasing, had whispered in my ear of the man approaching us with a needle and bottle of ink in his hands._

_My stomach lurched. How could someone who had once been a slave do something that would most likely be extremely unpleasant to another slave?_

_Master's cold hands had held me down while the freedman had drawn a serpent down my neck and spine with the needle, and dissimilar bands around my upper arms, and a spiked collar across my clavicles. Those hands did the same the next night, in another place with another man who was once a slave, when a branding iron pressed a circle containing a maze of lines into my right shoulder blade._

_Now, against the wall farthest from the window and the gentle sunlight it offered, my back was nonetheless caught in flames, and I wept._


	6. The Soldier: Celebrating the Gods

When Eric woke from dreaming of a boy's soft breath of desire and the click of fangs belonging to no creature that possessed a beating heart, the first thing that registered in his awareness was that the pattern embroidered onto the pillow beside his cheek was unfamiliar. Then he noticed that the walls he was looking at were certainly not the inside walls of his tent—these new walls were far too solid—and that he _couldn't hear the horses—_

Eric bolted to his feet, nearly tripping over the blanket tangled around his legs—_the_ _blanket tangled around his legs, which he had pulled up over his naked body last night—_

And smiled. He was home, after all.

He sat back down on his bed and began to leisurely unwind the blue-and-gold coverlet—its pattern was almost identical to that on Eric's pillow, although its colors were an exact match—from around his ankles. It had been wonderful to sleep naked again, to stretch his muscles on the bed without the restrictions of clothing to hamper them, to fantasize about the boy Godric's reactions to his body with more than a decent amount of privacy... He wondered if Godric slept naked—unlikely, considering how shy he had been about swimming the night before, and considering what he said he had gone through as a slave. But did creatures like Godric even sleep? Eric decided he would ask him about that when they met in the evening.

Feet successfully untangled, Eric stood and walked past his armor where it hung on a stand in a corner. He opened the door to his bedchamber—inlaid with geometric patterns in bronze and ivory that were instantly familiar—where two female slaves stood waiting. One of these women was the girl who had handed Floriana to him yesterday. Today, her hands were unfortunately empty of the child, instead holding a clay jug with a handle. Next to her stood an older woman with graying hair who Eric didn't recognize—except he did, not only because she seemed to resemble the younger woman a little, but also because he remembered her. "I didn't expect to see you again, Old Elpis."

The frown lines around Elpis's thin mouth deepened. "Will you be satisfied if I admit that if not for your mother and Ariston's cooking, I would have gladly left this house the day you were born?"

Eric chuckled and stepped to one side to allow the old woman and her armful of cleansing tools into the room. "Your pleasant conversational skills would have been a great source of entertainment on the road." He quirked an eyebrow at Floriana's caretaker—Anthousa, that was her name—as she followed her mother into the room; her gaze leapt away from his body as she blushed.

"Oh, for Venus's sake, girl, don't act like you haven't seen it all before," Elpis snapped as she laid a wooden bowl, a towel and a pair of small bronze tweezers out across the flat top of the wooden clothes chest situated at the foot of Eric's bed. Like the chest, the bed was footed with lion's paws; but, with its concave ends, the bed more closely resembled a dining couch than a rectangular storage area. "Are you blind to the statues of this city that depict so many men in all their glory? And I bet you weren't asleep when you fucked that serving boy that gave you my grandson."

Eric watched the girl's reaction in silence, feeling a smile tug at the corners of his mouth as she set the jug down on top of the chest with a _thump_, then lifted her chin and held Elpis's gaze. "His name is Aisopos. Master Ulfrik has already given us permission to marry."

"And if anyone else had given you that permission it would have been only because you'd birthed another pair of hands to serve them. If you weren't rolling around on the flour sacks in the kitchen with another boy just last night, maybe I wouldn't feel like I have to remind you of how generous the master and mistress are."

Eric wondered if it was possible that Old Elpis and her daughter had forgotten his presence in the room—this was, after all, a conversation he could quite easily repeat to his parents, and thereby have the girl punished. But perhaps that was what his childhood caretaker wished?

The girl's lower lip protruded as she jerked her head at Eric. "I've heard stories: _he_ gets to lay with whoever he wants."

Eric felt his smile flicker: this whiny child was suddenly no longer appealing.

"_He_ is Eric, not only the heir to this house but also a man, and men can do whatever they like! You, girl, would be ruined already if you weren't a slave! So help me to the peak of Olympus, I will beg the master and mistress to dismiss you if you do not begin to appreciate your position! But for now, you can leave this room!" The old woman's eyes, blazing as her tearful daughter fled the room, did not soften as she rounded on Eric. "What are you smirking at?"

"I am simply... recalling a few similar conversations from my younger days." Eric sat obediently on the bed at Old Elpis's familiar, jabbing gesture, then waited there while she left the room.

She soon returned with a different girl, also dark-haired but with smaller breasts, and began plucking out the sparse hairs that had appeared on his jaw and neck overnight with what he was certain was more force than was necessary. (But even his enjoyment of Old Elpis's snarky comments could not override his soldier's pride, and so he did not complain.) The girl poured water from the jug into the bowl and, dipping the towel into the clear liquid, knelt and began to wash his feet. Eric found himself disappointed that she didn't look up from her work once in awhile: her dark eyes were very pretty.

Godric's eyes were gray—a color Eric had rarely seen on his travels—and they had perhaps been even more beautiful. But this young woman would do for now. Eric smiled at the back of her head. "What's your name?"

The girl flinched at the inquiry, and although she continued in her work, she did not look up.

It was Old Elpis who answered for her. "Your parents named her Galene when they bought her last year. She's mute, although I doubt she'd complain as much as my daughter if she could talk."

Eric smirked. "That's almost a compliment, coming from you. Can she give fellatio?"

"I said she's mute, not that she didn't have a tongue." The woman harrumphed as she placed the tweezers on the chest and brushed imaginary hairs from her tunic. "The mistress needs to get you a personal slave; I'm too old to be serving more than one person in a day. Tidy up the room when he's done with you," she added to Galene as she walked out the door, shutting it behind her.

Eric cupped his hand under the young woman's chin, lifting her face, and her dark eyes met his. He smiled her, knowing the precise places in his face which could be rearranged to form an expression of seduction. "Do you find me handsome, Galene?"

The girl nodded, slowly returning his smile. She would have been trained to give such an answer, even if Eric had been unthinkably ugly, but there was sincerity in her gaze.

Of course there was. As he had told Godric the night before, everyone thought Eric was a god. "Will you consent to pleasing me?"

The girl nodded again, leaning forward to slip him into her mouth without hesitation.

Eric closed his eyes, his fingers constricting slightly on the edge of the mattress as a slow breath left his nostrils. As the girl's mouth moved on him, his mind recalled the way Godric's wet tunic had hung off his shoulders... The way the boy's small, cold hands fit nicely in his own... The look in those gray eyes as Godric ran his hands down Eric's slick chest... Eric wondered what it would be like to perform this favor on the boy... To taste him in another place besides that smooth neck and that beardless cheek... To run his hands over Godric's skin as the boy arched in pleasure... To hear his cries escalate as he reached his peak—

Barely a breath left Eric with his own release, but afterward his eyes opened with the realization that Godric was the first person he had ever considered pleasing while receiving only indirect pleasure for himself. In his fantasy, he hadn't cared that his own body wouldn't be receiving direct stimulation: his only concern had been for the boy.

The boy who drank the blood of humans to survive.

The boy who had sworn to be Eric's ally.

The boy who had reacted with open ecstasy to even the lightest kiss on the cheek from Eric.

Eric blinked and looked down at the girl, who had sat back and was now looking up at him with a smile, as though waiting for his next wishes.

He could not return her smile: she was no Godric. "Help me dress."

She took the beige tunic he had worn to dinner the night before from the clothes chest and slipped it over his head; he stood as his arms came through the sleeves. He brushed past her without a word when she had finished doing up his sandals.

Eric strode to the dining room without pause, not even deigning to acknowledge Elpis's raised eyebrows, expecting the chamber to be empty—

But Eric's parents and companions were already there, breakfasting on fruit and bread drizzled with honey.

The smile he gave them came easily. "I told you you'd be eating bread with honey soon enough," he told Gunnar.

His fair-haired brother-in-arms shrugged and swallowed. "Ariston's a good cook."

Grinning, Eric selected a fig and sat onto the remaining couch, not bothering to recline as he bit into the fruit. "So, are we demonstrating our abilities with the sword after we eat, then?"

Ulfrik nodded. "You'll be fighting me. I practiced a little with an old friend who came over after you left last night."

Eric's eyebrows shot up, but he said nothing: he had assumed Ulfrik would plan something like this.

* * *

Following the end of the meal, the four men retrieved their swords and went out into the courtyard behind the next-door shop. As Father weighed Eric's, Hrolf's and Gunnar swords in his hands, announcing his satisfaction with their craftsmanship, Mother had a chair brought out and positioned in the shade near the rear of the shop. Here Astrid sat with Floriana on her lap, propping the infant's back up in a sitting position against her mother's front, so that the child might look around.

"Be careful, all of you," Astrid said, smoothing Floriana's hair back from her forehead, although her eyes did not leave the men. "This isn't a gladiatorial arena. Your stakes are not your lives."

"Yes, madam."

"Yes, Mother." Eric gave his reply along with the rest of them. He felt a jolting sensation in the pit of his stomach at the tender expression with which his father gazed at his mother as he gave her his word, for this was almost the way Godric had looked at him last night when he agreed that Eric was not wrong to feel lust for the boy who drank the blood of others, but only human.

Eric and his companions fought Ulfrik one by one. Hrolf and Gunnar proved their own, of course, but Eric found his eyebrows lifting at his father's performance, particularly as he fought the man himself. Ulfrik did not move quite as quickly now as when he had trained Eric on a wooden sword when he was growing up, but even now there was no denying that each sword-stroke still possessed more than a decent amount of force behind it. When they had finished, all four of them were drenched in sweat and panting.

"The two of you are more than welcome to help guard my home while you're on leave," said Father to Hrolf and Gunnar once the four of them had caught their breath. "Crime is thankfully lower now than it could be, but you will be well-compensated in any case." He returned their smiles as he shook their hands. "You have been well-taught—all of you," he added as he, still smiling, looked at his son, and Eric couldn't keep himself from grinning back.

It was some of the highest praise he had ever received from his father.

* * *

Despite the wonderful hours Eric spent holding and smiling at his tiny sister, nightfall still could not come fast enough, and when it did, Eric, thinking of Godric's appreciation of his uniform, enlisted Old Elpis's help in donning the soldierly ensemble before going out. He bid his wartime companions farewell from their new posts at the front door—the man who had been there before had been gently reassigned to a job helping Astrid attend to her garden—and resisted a bizarre urge to run to the statue of the laughing satyr. He was, after all, only meeting a possible bedmate, and many of these of both sexes had waited until Eric was ready for them. He settled for a casual, long-legged stride, which turned out to be all that he could manage as the thick crowds of people wandering around among the festivities were waded through.

Finally, the amused, immobilized figure and the stand in front of it came into view—

And there was a peculiar throb of pressure in Eric's chest as he realized the boy was not there.

Perhaps Godric had gotten lost—he had said he hadn't been to the city in a long time, after all. Or perhaps he was cleaning himself up, since he hadn't really bathed with Eric last night...

The thought of those small hands, covered in lather, running up one of the boy's calves caused a stirring in Eric's groin.

"Eric!"

The sound of Godric's voice, already unmistakable to him, sent a thrill surging upward through every inch of Eric's being. He half-turned to find the boy standing next to him, a smile curving those small, pale lips. Eric wanted to kiss them.

"You came back." Though he was still smiling, there was a note of sadness in the youth's voice, and Eric realized that Godric had honestly believed Eric would not meet him tonight.

How many other disappointments had this ex-slave experienced?

Tiny, cold fingers reached up and up to touch his cheek. "You came back," the boy said again, and something in the way he spoke the phrase this time made it easy for Eric to return that small smile with a grin of his own.

"Of course I came back. I'm still determined to convince you that sex with me is the best sex you'll ever experience, after all."

The boy laughed. "I am very much looking forward to being convinced." They began to walk together, along the street past their meeting point. "Did you sleep well?"

Eric nodded. "What do you do in the daytime, since you can't let Apollo's light touch you? Can you sleep?"

"Yes. I find a dark place, usually deep in the earth, or even in a cave when I can find a safe one, and the sun pulls my mind down into slumber as it rises. We can resist it, as you can when you are tired but do not wish to sleep, but when we do it makes us bleed from our noses and ears and can make us very weak."

Eric kept a grimace from showing in his face. "That sounds painful."

Godric nodded. "It is better to rest."

Eric noted with a smile that the boy had fallen into step with him, with Godric's shorter legs moving just a little faster than his own so that he matched his pace. "Do you still dream?"

"Certainly." The boy's ears appeared to have reddened with the question; his gaze flickered up to Eric's and back to the crowded roadway ahead of them. "I... dreamed of you yesterday, after you left."

Eric reached out and casually ran his forefinger down the serpent's head that was inked into the back of Godric's neck. (He had guessed last night that the rest of the animal must descend the boy's spine, but what else was there to hide beneath that overlarge tunic Godric wore?) His grin widened as he watched the boy's eyelids flicker halfway shut. "Was it a good dream?"

"It was a very good dream." Godric's response was little more than a whisper; Eric was forced to lower his head slightly in order to hear it. "The best I've had in a very long time."

Eric smirked. "Rest assured that the reality will exceed your unconscious expectations."

Godric smiled. "I'm hoping it will."

Their walking led them to a courtyard, where they joined the back of a crowd milling before a stage which, by its rickety and creaking boards, looked to have been a hasty construction job. Judging by the fact that togaed actors were already pacing across the stage, and that their mimed actions encouraged the audience's laughter, he and the boy had arrived in the middle of a silent comedic performance.

"This will be a good introduction for you to the plebians' and off-duty soldiers' way of celebrating the gods," he said to Godric, who was standing close beside him. "These are a good laugh, and generally oversexed." Eric quirked a pale brow at the boy, who trembled visibly. In another night or two, hopefully, Eric would feel the vibrations of that small body against his... or perhaps sooner, if the satyr-play did its work.

Two costumed men stood on the stage now: one in a plain brown tunic, the other wearing a white tunic and a gaudily-painted, cheap parody of a military helmet; what it was made of, Eric didn't bother to guess. Each man had a sock tied to the front of the belt around his waist, obviously representing a phallus. The "plebian's" attachment was the same color as his tunic, and hung limply between his hips. The "soldier's" prop was clearly more well-stuffed, as it stood up like an erection, and was painted green with yellow eyes so that it looked like a snake, with a string of tiny bells around its neck and a red forked tongue.

Eric lowered his face to the boy's ear. "That pathetic excuse for a legionnaire would be a disappointment to you: I am larger even than he."

The tip of a pink tongue emerged to cross those pale lips, and Eric felt himself rise to hardness beneath his tunic.

He joined in the audience's laughter when the parody of a soldier gestured from his rival's drooping sock to his own erect one and shook his head with an exaggerated frown. The limp fellow left the stage, shoulders slumped, and was replaced by young woman wearing nothing but a gauzy white length of fabric around her hips; by this and the sensuality of her walk, she was obviously a prostitute. Although, the possibility that all three actors sold themselves for sex in real life was certainly plausible: in Eric's life, he had never met anyone of the stage who earned particularly good coin.

Eric watched Godric's reaction as the girl walked onstage, and couldn't help smiling at the blankness of his face—it was almost boredom. The boy had been true to his word: the female form did not excite him. Eric found his decision to please the boy strengthened by this fact.

The prostitute took the "soldier's" jingling sock in hand. Eric smirked as he watched Godric watch the sock being caressed. The boy's eyes were wide; his hard swallow was visible, although it was difficult to determine through that oversized tunic whether Godric was now as hard between the thighs as Eric was. But it was certain, by the way the boy's eyes darted from the scene before them to Eric to the ground and back again, that Godric was imaging Eric's touch upon him.

There was a very quiet but familiar clicking sound. The boy had his hand over his mouth by the time Eric's gaze had darted over to it; small brows drew together, accompanied by another click, and when Godric lowered his hand there was no trace of those terribly sharp teeth.

"I'm sorry," Godric said quietly, his gaze meeting Eric's as though to communicate sincerity. "This body is... easy to excite."

"So I noticed," Eric smirked. "Shall we walk on—give you a chance to cool down?"

The boy nodded; his smile was adorably sheepish.

They stepped onto the street, joining the stream of people once again.

"Do your fangs come out only when you've been aroused sexually?" Eric asked, still smiling.

Godric shook his head. "They emerge also when I am angry, or at the sight of blood, or if I feel threatened, or when I am particularly hungry. I can also prompt them to emerge or retract as I please."

Eric's brow furrowed. "How do they work?"

"Have you ever seen a serpent that has two long fangs at the front of its mouth, that are much bigger than its other teeth?"

Eric nodded. One of his commanders over the years, when Eric was fresh out of training, had been bitten by one. Unfortunately, the man had died before the camp doctor had been able to determine an antidote to the poison. But someone had killed the snake, and Eric had gotten a glimpse of its mouth when a slave brought the snake to the doctor, and its teeth had been just as the boy described.

"When the snake closes its mouth, those fangs swing up flat against the roof of its mouth." Godric demonstrated with his fingers. "Mine work just like that, except, as I said, I can control the circumstances somewhat, and my outer incisors rest against the roof of my mouth when my fangs are down, while these snakes have no such teeth."

"You find them interesting." Eric could tell by a few nuances in the youth's voice.

Godric shrugged. "Can I help it if the biological similarity between our species made me curious?"

Eric laughed: if the boy's fascination with the military and Eric's armor was any indication, then no, Godric definitely couldn't help himself.

They extricated themselves from the crush of people—an act, thought Eric, that was similar to swimming upstream against a mildly strong current—when they came to one of the large public parks spread throughout the city. A stepping-stone walkway wound through flowerbeds filled with oleanders, crocuses, lilies, amaranth, and other blooms that Mother somehow hadn't had the chance to introduce to him when he was a boy. Marble benches without backs and towering plane trees divided the path into many branches. Except for a pair of elderly couples sitting on the benches nearest Eric and the boy, the park was mostly empty, and wholly quiet.

"It's beautiful here," Godric murmured suddenly, breaking the thoughtful silence between them. He reached down and cupped his hand around the bottom of a spherical purple blossom with many florets, as if he were holding a goblet; his fingers slipped upward through the delicate petals with what appeared to be the utmost gentleness as he released it.

"My mother grows a large number of those in the garden room in our house," Eric said suddenly. He was generally rather hesitant to share the intimate details of the non-sexual aspects of his life with people he barely knew—unless, of course, those details could lead them to his bed. "I could show them to you sometime, if you want."

"That would be nice," Godric replied as they walked on, "although I am not overly interested in flowers. They make a place beautiful, and they smell nice, and I have found that the bees that are attracted to them are interesting to watch once in awhile, now that being stung has so little effect on me. I have studied flowers a little, but like most things they do not hold my interest for long. But I would not mind it if you showed me your mother's garden, all the same." He smiled. "Does she look like you? Your mother, I mean."

Eric nodded. "As do my father and my sister, Floriana." He casually sat upon the next bench they came to, which was situated near the opposite end of the park from where he and the boy had entered it.

Godric remained standing, hands loosely clasped before his groin as though they were used to resting there, his gaze something between hope and resentment.

Then Eric realized what he wanted, and the smile he offered the boy was as much out of pity as encouragement. "You don't need my permission to sit down, you know. Our pact notwithstanding, you are still a free man." Eric indicated the space beside him on the bench with a tilt of the head and a twitch of a brow.

Hesitantly, the boy perched himself on the spot indicated, and Eric returned his smile when he found that Godric had settled himself quite a bit nearer to Eric than he would have guessed. It would be good if his overflow of confidence would rub off on the youth a little, as it appeared to have now, with that simple act of sitting close to Eric.

"This is nice," said Godric, after they had been sitting together in silence for a long moment.

It was nice: every inch of Eric's body on the side nearest to the boy was tingling. He turned halfway towards the boy. "I can show you something else that's nice, if you like."

Godric, who had turned halfway towards Eric in response, looked up at Eric with his head cocked to the side and his brows drawn together; the expression was at once endearing and almost arousing. "What is it?"

"This," said Eric, and, cupping one hand around the back of that small neck and ensnaring Godric's back with his other arm, he kissed him.

A shudder rippled down Godric's body with the first light brush of their lips, and Eric felt every inch of the gesture. He pressed their lips together twice more before he decided the boy would not be frightened by his advancement, sucking gently on first Godric's upper lip and then the lower, alternating the pressure with the barest of licks on them by the tip of his tongue. After several long moments of these repetitions, he decided to delve into Godric's mouth, and tilted his head to deepen the kiss, his tongue brushing the boy's. Like the rest of Godric that Eric had previously had contact with, his tongue was cool, but just as wet as any human's, and sweeter than even Eric could have imagined.

A soft groan accompanied the click of fangs when the boy broke away, presumably so his otherworldly teeth wouldn't hurt Eric, and the new sound brought heat to Eric's groin.

Godric's eyes were wide, and he was panting slightly. "No-one has ever kissed me before."

Eric smiled to hide the fact that he should have expected as much, given the little he knew of Godric's history. "Did you like it?"

"Very much," answered the boy, his sweet lips trembling into a smile. "Would you kiss me again? But be careful of my teeth—it would pain me to see you hurt."

"I would love to kiss you again," Eric said, and he did so, little by little and again and again, long into the small hours of the morning.


	7. The Slave: Water's Reflection

I woke the next night with the taste of Eric still on my lips. Not of his blood, which I could not still help but be eager to taste, but of his gentle mouth. The flavor was a sweetness that was wholly Eric's, with undercurrents of wine and honey.

He had been so good to me, just as he promised, even in the simple act of joining his mouth to mine. I had felt lightheaded, but in a pleasant way. My blood had swept through my veins in quick pulses. I had trembled, and wrapped my arms around his neck, and trembled and trembled.

My master had not haunted my thoughts while I was in Eric's arms. Nor when we had parted just before dawn, the both of us panting with a need that the sunrise would have not allowed us to satisfy, even had we stayed together. Nor had Master haunted my dreams this past day. Eric and his tenderness had protected me from myself and my mind and my master—of that I was certain.

I was also certain that I would ask Eric to make love to me tonight. There was no terror to force me to put it off any longer.

I had woken with my eyes closed—an instinct preserving my eyes from the dirt—and now I tunneled upward to the surface blind. I felt a gentle breeze blow over my fingers first: then my hands, my forearms, my face. I shook the dirt from my head, albeit unsuccessfully, as I wriggled my way out of the earth, and wondered how it would feel to see Eric doing the same beside me.

Since meeting Eric, I had left the city as dawn neared and buried myself in the surrounding forest, in a different spot each night, in places where disturbances of the earth would be least likely to be noticed by human eyes. Now I found the river that I had used to bathe for the past few nights by scent and did so again, hurriedly washing myself and my tunic, wishing there was a cave nearby so I at least would not appear so dirty every evening. I had rarely before been overly particular about my appearance, except in those cases when a dirtied body would lessen my ability to pass as a human being, or because my master demanded extra cleanliness from me for his own perverse reasons. But I did like to be clean, at least, and now I wished to be well-kept for Eric.

I joined the throng of revelers in the city with a light heart and a quick step. I had been slightly late the night before, because of the necessary removal of dirt, but tonight I wished to be early, so that I might see Eric's face light up when he saw me waiting for him.

He had not yet arrived near the statue of the laughing satyr when I reached it. I stood off to the side, scanning the crowd, time and time again rising up on my toes as though that would help me glimpse him from farther off. I almost wished my eyesight was as paltry as a human's, so that my restlessness at not seeing the decurio might be lessened.

And then I cocked my head at a vaguely familiar, almost muffled sound, and something jumped in my chest as I realized from my months of following the decurio what it was: Eric, crying out in pain.

I fought the flow of the crowd, shoving and elbowing those in my way even when it was not necessary, trying to appear as though I was merely a slave anxious that I would be whipped if I did not return to my master quickly enough. I received several blows from the indignant throng in return, and fought down the urge to turn and tear them all to pieces as my fangs itched at the roof of my mouth. Eric was in danger: this was no time to retaliate against past abuses.

Panting, my stomach fluttering, I cast about for Eric's scent on the wind. It came to me easily, if faintly, and I followed it to an area of the city where the crowd had lessened: understandable, for here there was nothing to keep them entertained. I stumbled into an alleyway—

The smell of Eric's blood hit me like a wave of heat: it was his scent and the taste of his mouth combined and intensified. My fangs dropped; a warm pulse began between my thighs as my head grew light.

I blinked, and a red haze that I had not known to previously exist was gone.

And there was a small, male someone crouching over Eric—a small, male someone with the head of a serpent slithering up the back of his neck, out from the collar of his tunic...? Eric lay struggling on the ground, his blade and armor and other clothing tossed to one side. This someone who bore a tattoo identical to mine had clamped a small hand over Eric's mouth, and was slowly digging his fingers into the bloody flesh of Eric's chest with his other hand—

Snarling, I threw myself upon the small figure without thinking. We somersaulted off of Eric, our momentum halted by the wall of a building. The back of my opponent's head hit brick with a _crack_.

"Eric is _mine_," I growled, thinking his aggressor was of my species, and therefore using the words of possession that Master had used a thousand times for me: _Godric is mine_. There was a strange sensation in my chest when I said it: not quite the pain of guilt or fear, and not quite the thrilling rush of pride or happiness.

But then I looked at my adversary, really looked, and I felt my eyes widen as my jaw dropped.

The creature—for I was certain now that it could not be of my kind—possessed my face. My brow. My eyes. My nose. My lips. My chin.

My face.

My—face...?

It grinned, in a grotesque parody of the expression I had seen so many times in water's reflection, and I stared at my fangs, my slightly crooked tooth on the left side.

"Well, this will be interesting," the beast—I could not bear to think of it as me—said with my voice, and its fist slammed into my mouth.

The power of the blow drove me onto my back. My head smacked stone paving. My ears rang as my mouth burned.

"An eye for an eye!" the creature singsonged, and leapt lightly over me, knocking down Eric, who had been struggling to sit up. Those blue eyes that I so loved were almost clouded over with pain.

A rumbling sound vibrated in my throat as, spitting blood, I wrenched the beast from Eric by the back of the neck and threw it into the opposing wall. My fingers tingled where I had touched it: the action had been like touching the nape of my own neck...

The creature lunged at me, and we grappled, rolling over and over on the ground.

When we connected with brick once again, my fingers dug into the beast's shoulders. "Why did you attack Eric? What are you, to wear my face?"

It cocked its head, just as I often did, grinning as it mimicked my wide eyes. "You've lived over twice a human's lifespan, and you still don't know? How have you managed to survive?"

But then my eyes widened in return: I _did_ know. I returned the blow to the mouth it had given me, and it pushed its feet into my gut and shoved me off of itself.

"_You've lived over twice a human's lifespan..."_ I kicked out at the creature, but it dodged my feet. "How long have you been following me?"

It shrugged, grinning, darting out of the reach of my clawing fingers as I stood. "Couple days, more or less. I've been hunting your kind for a long time, but your age was a lucky guess." The creature licked blood off its fingers, backing off as I approached. "Your human is delicious, by the way."

"_Your human is delicious, by the way."_

It had tasted Eric. It had tasted Eric!

Snarling, I threw myself against it, knocking it to the ground—

And I screamed as I felt a burning sensation on the side of my neck. My flesh hissed; I could smell the smoke.

Silver.

I watched the creature run out of sight with a speed not unlike my own as the pain drove me to my knees. Wrapping a shaking hand in the collar of my tunic, I reached up and pulled the offensive metal from my neck; a whimper fled me as the silver clung for one last instant to my flesh. My hand opened, and it dropped to the ground: a thin necklace, inlaid with tiny rubies. It was a moment before I realized that those rubies were drops of my own blood. I shuddered, and placed my palm against my neck. Though it came away crimson, there was no pain in the action: I had already healed. I had not noticed if the creature wore jewelry, taken aback by its appearance as I had been, but the necklace must have belonged to it.

"Godric."

My chest pulsed uncomfortably: Eric's utterance of my name was little more than a croak.

I was at his side in a blur, my gaze raking over the damage—thankfully, his ribs had not exposed—before I sank my fangs into my wrist and held it to Eric's lips. "You must drink. It will hasten your healing. Hurry." I had no idea how much blood Eric had lost, only that it was too much.

His gaze on mine, the decurio swallowed, and I felt a part of myself enter him, moving down and down, through his inner walls to the places that required repair. He swallowed again, and I grew rigid, my head pounding, my mouth gasping with agony, my eyes darting for a new threat, before I told myself that the pain and terror I was feeling belonged to Eric.

My throat was suddenly thick. What if I had acted too late, and Eric died in my arms?

I ran the fingers of my other hand through his hair, slowly, again and again, whispering, "Shh... Shh..." The need to comfort him, as much as myself, was overwhelming. "You are safe with me. I swore to be your ally. You are safe with me."

I watched his chest heal: first the muscles knitting together, and then the skin. A warmth replaced the horror: gratitude.

When I was certain he was no longer in pain, I removed my wrist, and it was soon like new. I continued to stroke his hair, and my voice remained gentle. "What happened?"

"I thought... _it_ was you." Eric's still-rapid pulse was loud in my ears. "I met it by the satyr statue, as you and I had agreed to do last night. We walked here together, and I stopped to kiss it..." Some of the fire that had suddenly flared to life within me must have shown on my face, but the decurio made no comment of it, and I did not begrudge him for that: I already knew his appetites could not be sated by a single, constant mate alone. "It said it wanted to have sex with me. When it took off my clothes, fangs appeared in its mouth, like yours do..." He blinked three times in rapid succession. "And then it was tearing me apart. It was very strong..." He sat up, and our faces were very close. "What _was_ that thing? It couldn't have been what you are—you would've told me if you could mimic the forms of others."

"So I would have," I nodded, and my stomach flipped. I had saved his life twice now: of course he should trust me. Still, despite what had just happened, the feeling of that trust was glorious.

I breathed deeply. "That was a satyr."

One pale brow lifted. "Like the male followers of Bacchus, with the goat legs and the lechery...?"

"Yes." The thought of lechery shining in Eric's blue eyes made me swallow, and reawakened the stiffness of my groin. "They can mimic the forms and abilities of almost any creature they wish, in order to fulfill their duty as spies for Bacchus."

Now Eric's entire brow had risen. "Why would a god need spies? How do you know this?" I felt no prickles of suspicion from him, only surprise.

"Just as a slave does the work his master does not wish to do, so do some creatures ensure that the gods who created them are believed in and worshipped. As you were probably told in your childhood, the gods are mostly concerned with the affairs of heroes. The actions of ordinary mortals are left to be watched over by their subordinates." I took another slow breath. "I know these things because my master wished to make sure that I was... properly educated in the sexual arts." That was all Eric needed to know; even if he would ask for more detail, I could not bear to give it.

The decurio's jaw hardened. "It's a pity that bastard is already dead."

I nodded, my blood singing. "It would have given me great pleasure to see you slay him."

"... I suppose," Eric said after a moment, "that once again I owe you my thanks." He kissed me then, wrapping his arms around me. My mouth strove to mimic the caresses of his lips and tongue. My palms rested against his chest as I found my thighs spreading around his hips. My desire pressed against his, and a groan tumbled from my lips as my blood grew hot with our combined lusts.

"What do you mean, 'Eric is mine'?" He murmured the question with his mouth still against mine.

For a moment I could not answer his question: the sweetness of his kisses had made me dizzy.

"It is a term of claiming among my kind." I extricated myself from him, the better to think, releasing all but his hands. "I thought the satyr who attacked you was one of my species at first, and I spoke those words to protect you. If it had been what I am, then it would not have attacked you again, out of respect for me. It is a thing of politeness: only the one who claims a human can feed from or have sex with him or her, unless permission is given otherwise."

His eyes were painfully cold. "So your kind view all humans as slaves—not only the real slaves."

"Yes. Even before I met you, they were nothing but food to me." I swallowed. "You are the only human I have ever claimed, but you are the furthest thing from a slave that I have ever met."

After a moment, his eyes softened. "You didn't ask to be like this, and you have saved my life twice now, so I can't hold that against you." He leaned forward until his forehead nearly rested against mine. "When you gave me your blood... Will I become what you are?"

I shook my head, cursing the air between us even as I prided his intelligence. "The process is a little more complicated than that, and although I have wanted to turn you ever since I first laid eyes on you all those months ago, I would not do so unless you asked me to. To live a potentially endless life under the whim of another is a choice I did not get to make for myself, and I would prefer that you have the opportunity to accept me as your Maker under your own free will."

His gaze shifted away from me and back again. "I'm not sure right now if I would want to become what you are."

I lifted my hand and ran my fingers through his hair once more even as his uncertainty sliced open my chest. "I cannot blame you. But you must know, Eric the decurio, that you have your whole life to decide, for I will still want you as mine when you are wrinkled and gray."

He lifted an eyebrow. "Really?"

I held his gaze, imagining lines around his eyes that did not disappear when he was not smiling. "I am certain of it."

His lips met mine, his kisses once again quick and passionate, and I allowed his arms to encircle me once more. His heartbeat thundered beneath my palms.

In that moment, as our tongues danced, I knew he would not care about the ruin of my back.

"Make love to me." I gasped the words between one darting peck and the next. Every inch of me throbbed with blood. I took hold of the belt on my tunic, preparing to loosen it, so sweetly aware of Eric's nakedness but for his sandals—

A dart of ice shot through me, and only Eric's blanched features told me that the emotion had not been mine.

"Can a satyr smell as well as you can?" He spoke the words before I could ask what was wrong.

"I wouldn't doubt it. There are many creatures whose sense of smell is far better than a human's—" Then I understood what he was after, and my eyes felt as wide as his.

"Sons of Death!" Eric swore, and together we scrambled to our feet. I dressed him in a blur, knowing we didn't have the time for his slow human movements, and in seconds he was fully clothed. He staggered a bit when I had finished, but my hands were already there to steady him, for of course he would be unaccustomed to so many quick movements at once.

"Take that," I said, gesturing to the necklace, and it disappeared in the decurio's fist. "I want to study it later once we make sure your family is safe: it may give us some clue as to who this satyr is."

Eric led me through the streets of Rome at a sprinting pace, and I matched his every step. Even if his family was already dead, I would let no harm come to Eric.


	8. The Memorial: Awakening

"_Move, whore, you're blocking the light."_

_I fought down the thousandth urge to touch my puffy, purpled cheek, in the place just under my left eye—the bruise had formed there the night before, and it would be there tomorrow night, slowly healing. What had happened had happened: I did not need a bruise to confirm it._

_Shifting my fingers a little on the corners of the papyrus scroll I was holding open against the table, I stepped to the side, knowing full well a shadow was nothing to Master's unnaturally superior vision, but I had learned long ago that it was best that I did as I was told without objection. Long considering the day I was sold as the day of my birth, I had been fifteen for a few months now, but Master's insults had rarely changed, and I suspected they rarely would in the future. To say they no longer hurt me would be a lie, for I knew the truth in them: I submitted to my master as a whore did his or her client, and therefore I was as he named me._

_The candle's glow revealed the contents of both the aged scroll I held open, which had been stored on a high shelf on the other side of the library in which we were stationed, and of the new vellum scroll which Master had propped open with a few polished stones. (I carried these, along with a few styluses, several reed-pens, and a set of small jars of black and colored inks in a special box, which Master required me to bring for him to his various places of work. I had accidentally dropped that box once, perhaps a year after I had been sold to him, and his fury at all the things I had broken had haunted my dreams for weeks.)_

_From my first few nights in his presence, I had known that my master's line of work was to copy and embellish illustrated books that might be considered distasteful—even by the people of our nation. His clients, whether human or of his kind, were almost always wealthy, for Master would work with only the finest materials, and he expected a great profit from his great expense. Even my untrained eye could see his talent, and I had long hated him for it: a man who could be so terrible to me and yet so pleasant to everyone else should not deserve to be given such artistic ability by the Muses._

_The piece whose colors he was finishing up now—a labor of the past week—was nothing short of erotica. Around the elegant script of the story—a manual of instruction as much as a tale of debauchery—was a variety of creatures, human and half-human, in various labeled sexual positions. A few of these oversexed beasts possessed the upper body and genitals of a man, joined to the legs and tail of a goat; these creatures possessed the cone-shaped ears of a goat, sticking straight out from either side of their heads, also. I had seen similar images and statues of these goat-men throughout my life in Rome, but it seemed I could not remember what they were called... Had Master taken their name from me, knowing the absent memory would be such a great frustration to my curious mind?_

_My gaze wandered over the rest of the work. The intercourse itself that was depicted in this book would not be found objectionable by most: examples of it were everywhere throughout the city. But the blood, and the fangs Master had added to some of the mouths of the lovers in his copy of the work, would drive away many of those who enjoyed the violence at the Colosseum—even if this particular copy was not being made for a member of Master's own species, or if their laws did not demand that the very existence of that species be kept secret._

_On any other night, I might have fidgeted or tried to otherwise disobey Master's orders to watch him at his work. But, whether because of what happened to me the night before or not, tonight I could not look away._

* * *

_Master had deemed me responsible enough to buy my own food for the day at the nearby market—_without_ trying to run away—since I was ten years old, and therefore I was no longer tied up, unless I had been especially unruly in his eyes. Aside from these trips for food, my schedule had been largely nocturnal for years, and so when I woke yesterday evening, the sky was pink with dusk._

_I had been given a thin blanket to keep me warm during the cool nights of the winter months—though it never grew terribly cold here, Master would have thought my freezing to death a waste—and I remained lying under it for a moment, thinking on the soldier I had accidentally brushed shoulders with in the market earlier that day. His dark hair, his aquiline nose, his strong jaw, his muscular limbs... A peculiar thrilling sensation had rushed upward through my belly when we had, for that instant, made contact, and I felt it again now. I wondered how far beneath his tunic those muscles extended..._

_I felt a stiffness slowly form in my groin. I sat up, pulled down the blankets, loosened the belt of my tunic and pulled up its skirt, and stared at the change in my body. Though I had possessed features associated with the groin of a grown man for at least a year now, still I could grow no beard, and never before had physical desire risen in me. Apparently the gods thought I was not as unworthy of this as Master—and, therefore, I—had thought._

_Abruptly I yearned to explore something that would surely have been forbidden had Master been awake. My heart racing, I pulled off my tunic and sat on my blanket with my knees slightly bent, and allowed myself to imagine the soldier at his bath. My fingers trailed down my chest and belly as he poured river-water over his head and the liquid droplets descended his body. I grasped the place of my pleasure as he rubbed the water into his skin—he was a mere foot soldier, so he would not have been able to afford soap or even olive oil to wash with—and a gasp was torn from me when I allowed my hand to move back and forth around it._

_The sensation felt better than I had ever wondered._

_Soon I grew lightheaded, and turned to lie on my belly upon the blanket, and trembled. A sweet warmth filled me. My hips began to rock slightly, against the rhythm my hand had taken, and as my head tipped back and my eyes fluttered halfway shut and my mouth fell open with the gasping sounds that flew from between my lips, the rest of the world fell away. There was only this sensation of weightlessness, of physical affection, and it was so—so—_

_I cried out as my pleasure reached its height, the space behind my eyes throbbing once with a feeling release in my groin, and for a moment I thought consciousness would leave me._

_I came back down into myself slowly. I became aware that I was still panting slightly, and aftershocks of warmth were still flooding me in small pulses, and I was still trembling._

_I had never felt so good in all my life._

_Then I was lying flat on my back, my cheek burning, and I realized what had happened only as I saw Master draw back his fist from the point where he had struck me. He was panting, his lips drawn back from those painfully sharp teeth, and the look in his eyes turned my blood to ice._

_I shrank away from him, suddenly desperate to make excuses I knew he would not heed—_

"_Look!" He grabbed me by the back of the neck and shoved the wet section of my blanket in my face with his free hand, like a man showing a dog the bad deed it had done by urinating on the floor. But what I had expelled was not urine. "Look at the mess you've made, you slut! Look at it, you stupid whore!" He hit me again, in the same place, and a small scream escaped me before I could stop it._

"_Do you want to be fucked? Is that what you want?" Master yanked on my shoulder so that I fell on my front on the floor. I watched him loosen his belt out of the corner of my eye, and did not resist, knowing that doing so would only worsen the experience. He knelt over me and entered me roughly. Each hard thrust was more painful than the one before it._

"_Perhaps I've let you grow too old," he muttered._

_I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing lust had never come to me. I knew from then on that it would only result in guilt and pain, and I was wrong to feel it._

_And I was more determined than ever to end my master's life._

* * *

_A slap on the sore side of my face brought me back to the present. "I said I was finished here!" Master snapped, and I hurried to carefully gather his materials in their box. The lustful book had dried during my reminiscence; carefully I rolled up the scroll and handed it to my master. Carrying the box of implements in both hands, I followed him out of the library at his beckoning gesture, knowing that the librarian here—who was of the same kind as my master, and who had allowed us entry to the building—would soon be along to put the old scroll in its proper place._

* * *

_The next night I accompanied Master to a party that his current client was holding. The event had been announced a couple of weeks ago, in order to give Master enough time to finish the book, so that it might be unveiled tonight at the gathering. _

_The scroll in question was in my hands as we stepped into the atrium. The slight smile on Master's face had my stomach in knots. Was he merely looking forward to the silver he would be paid tonight, or was he also planning some new misfortune for me?_

_I stared at the pool of water in the middle of the room, lit by the few lamps that had been hung from the ceiling so that I and the few other humans present could view and envy the splendor around us, and I wished I could drown myself in it._

"_Servius!" The booming call belonged to a large, fleshy man with a red face that I knew was often given to smiling—even when beating his own slaves. He had been a repeat customer of my master's—it seemed as though he requested a new work every few months—and Master's satisfaction with his payment was a blessing to me, for within the gleam of denarii I was sometimes, if not often, invisible._

"_It is good to see you again, Domitius," replied my master as they shook hands. I had not yet figured out whether he honestly viewed Domitius as a friend, or merely tolerated him because of his generous payments._

"_Excellent, it looks lovely!" Domitius cried as his gaze lit on the rolled vellum in my hands, which Master had tied closed with a length of blue cord._

"_You've seen nothing yet!" Master laughed—the sound, although it was no different from any other man's laugh, turned my stomach—as he allowed himself to be led past several closed doors and a small garden to the dining room. I followed close behind them, removing Master's sandals when we reached the room, and stood behind his dining couch as he reclined upon it. The couch opposite his groaned as Domitius lay back; the other two, completing a square, were occupied by another, if smaller, man, and lastly a dark-skinned woman who must have been of Master's species as well, because when a quartet of slaves brought out goblets for the guests and their host, the liquid in them was the unmistakable dark red of blood._

_The sight of it might have once nauseated me, but Master had long ago ensured that I would be far too accustomed to its presence for it to sicken me now._

"_Show us your master's latest creation, boy," said Domitius, nodding to the scroll._

_I hoped my sweat would not leave marks on the vellum as I glanced to my master, who gave a short nod. Cautiously I untied the cord and, ensuring the inside would be facing the client, unrolled the scroll._

_There was a quiet, collective gasp as everyone gazed at the contents._

_Domitius, thank the gods, was beaming. He was always pleased with Master's works, but I have found that it is never unwise to anticipate the consequences of a customer's dissatisfaction. He held up his goblet: "To a new story, and a new sexual adventure!"_

_Master took a sip of the blood along with the others. A dark brow rose. "It has a very nutty flavor. What did you feed this human?"_

"_He ate nothing but almonds from the time I announced this party would occur. He was a beautiful Greek boy, just on the cusp of puberty." Domitius took a gulping swallow. "Delicious."_

_Now, thinking of my own sexual maturity two nights before, I felt dizziness threaten the edges of my consciousness. But I could not give in to it: I must keep my wits, or else I would be punished later._

_Two more courses of blood were brought out—one served in goblets as before, the third a kind of soup—before the small man protested he could not hold any more, and Domitius was forced to wave the servants away when Master and the dark woman agreed with him._

_Domitius beckoned me forward; I handed him the scroll. He read softly to himself, and when he had finished the tale he handed it to his sole female guest to peruse. He removed the purse from his belt and, briefly glancing at the coins inside it, tossed it to Master with a lazy motion of his arm; Master's hand blurred to catch it. "That's more than your original price; the work is beyond exquisite."_

_Two large fingers pressed against Domitius's lips. "Would the rest be sufficient payment for me to have your boy help me try out some of these new positions you've painted in my book?"_

_I glanced back at my master, my heart pounding. He had often shown himself to be a selfish man—surely this trait of his, that my hungry belly had cursed so many times, would now save me from humiliation?_

_That hint of a smirk was back. "As his master, I reserve any beating or partaking of his blood as my right alone. Otherwise, each of you can use him as you wish."_

_So he had been planning a new misfortune._

_But perhaps Domitius, out of some insecurity for his own less-than-fit body, would take me in private. Master had hit me in public many times, but he had confined his worst punishments to our apartment. My disgust and embarrassment for my bruised, branded, ugly body—which Master had, of course, instilled in me from a young age—were expressions viewed by the sun alone. Did these people really wish to view them on my face as they raped me?_

_Domitius snapped his fingers. "Remove your clothing, boy."_

_Slowly, I bent to undo my sandals, slipping them from my feet, and set them aside. I began to untie my belt. The woven cords were slick in my sweating palms._

_I knew I would not be able to meet the eyes of my audience once I was naked. The lust in them was the last thing I wanted to see._

_I thought of the discipline of soldiers standing at attention. I fixed my gaze on a point high on the opposite wall—and swallowed when I saw a pair of the goat-men who had pestered my thoughts the night before. Their red cheeks were as vivid as those on Master's book. They were dancing with a group of nymphs, kissing the female figures' slender necks and cupping their breasts in their hands. The bright, staring eyes of the goat-men caused an inexplicable shiver to ascend my spine, but I held my gaze, silently daring them to leap from the wall and kill me._

_I would count my death as a blessing from the gods._

_Finally, I pulled my tunic over my head—so conscious of how it revealed my skin, inch by insufferable inch—and it slipped from sweaty fingers to the floor._

_My naked body prickled with the sweeping gazes of four pairs of eyes._

"_Where did he get those markings?" Domitius, of course; I watched his finger trace the air over my tattoos out of the corner of my eye. He rose to his feet with a grunt and circled me, slowly; I allowed my eyes to glaze over in an expression of submission when his gaze flickered to mine._

_I did not have to see Master's smile to know it was there. "I commissioned them. They're of Gaulish origin—little reminders of his place in our world."_

_Domitius's finger pressed against the circular brand on the back of my right shoulder, tracing the maze within it. I suppressed a shudder: his touch was perhaps even colder than my master's. Was temperature—or, rather, a lack of one—an indication of how old a member of their species was?_

_I hoped I would not live long enough to confirm this observation._

"_He's a little old for your tastes, isn't he?" the dark woman asked Domitius, gesturing to the evidence of my physical maturity._

"_I think he's at a perfect age," Master interrupted before his host could reply. His tone was harsh, and I resisted the urge to cower at the sound of it. Did he feel guilt because he had not yet killed me? "He's beardless, but if you wanted to be penetrated, he could be the one to do it. I caught him touching himself the night before last. When they're old enough to do that, the services they could provide only get better and better. He's become my skilled little helper in trying out new positions, and I can tell you now that each of those on that scroll is excellent."_

_Now the small man and the dark woman were regarding me with gleaming eyes._

_A smile suddenly began to lurk at the corners of Domitius's mouth. "What does he like?"_

"_He's partial to soldiers," Master replied, and I knew he was smiling also. "He wants to become one when he's old enough—can you believe it?"_

_It was as though someone had taken a knife and dragged it straight down my chest, cutting it in two._

_Had Master's ability to hypnotize taken even my most closely guarded secret from me?_

_Domitius laughed as he reclined once again on his dining couch. "With how small he is? The armor would be much too heavy for him." Then, seeming to notice my fixed gaze, turned his head and looked at the lustful goat-men before returning his eyes to me. "Have you ever seen a satyr, boy?"_

_Ah, yes, that was what they were called!_

_I made sure to keep my satisfaction behind the walls of my face as I answered him, "No, sir."_

"_They work in service to Bacchus—make sure he's worshipped properly and all that. They can take on the shapes of any creature they wish, in order to better fulfill their duties—even one of us, if it's convenient. All they have to do is see someone, or a likeness of him, and they can take his shape. I've never met one, but this story—" he gestured to the scroll, now in the hands of the diminutive man "—seems to give an excellent account of what they're like. Did your master have you read it?"_

"_Yes, sir."_

_Domitius gestured with a large hand. "Recite."_

_I swallowed, my heat racing. I suspected, because of the story's contents, why Domitius would have me tell the story aloud when everyone here had already read it themselves. But, although the story was originally Greek, Master had retold it in Latin. Because of this and the familiar, icy gaze I could feel boring into my lower back, I was powerless to refuse him._

"_An old man had traveled with his young daughter to the city of Argos, so that they might make their living there. But Neptune, angry at Hera for claiming the land as her own, had dried up even the smallest springs. The old man knew he could not live without water, but, being too tired from his journey to search for water, sent his daughter to look for some instead. So the girl took up her father's spear and set out in search of water._

"_Now, the girl's name was Amymone, and she was as beautiful as Helen of Troy, with long, golden tresses and bouncing curves. A servant of Dionysus, whose name was Tityroi, saw the young woman as she walked through his wood and lusted for her. He changed his shape from that of a man and a goat to a deer, and lay down in a clearing. Amymone saw the antlers of the stag and knew he would make a fine meal for her father's table._

"_But, just as she threw her father's spear, Tityroi regained his true form and caught her weapon, tossing it aside on the ground. Erect with lust, he caught her in his arms, attended to have sex with her._

"_But she screamed and begged the aid of Neptune, the very same god who hid the water she sought to find. He appeared in the clearing as a giant soldier, twice the size of a mortal man, naked but for a cloak, helmet, and spear..."_

_I felt my groin begin to harden. Several snickers from Domitius and his guests reached my ears._

"_Go on," said my master's host._

"_Seeing the might of Neptune, the satyr ran away. Neptune made himself small, as tall as a mortal man, so as not to frighten the girl. He asked Amymone why she was wandering the wood unattended, and she replied that her father had sent her to seek out water, for without it they would surely perish. Neptune, seeing how pretty the girl was, promised to return water to the land if she would lie with him. She agreed, and he lowered her to the ground—" I stopped. The rest of the tale was instructional—surely I would not need to finish it?_

"_That's enough," said Master's host, his eyes on the space between my legs, and untied his belt. He pulled up the end of his tunic, patting himself. "Hop on, then, boy, and show me the rest."_

_I swallowed bile as I straddled his hips with my back to him, and closed my eyes as he thrust upward into me. I rolled my hips slightly as I moved on him, as Master had taught me, and prayed to Venus that it was sweat and not tears that I felt rolling down my cheeks._

* * *

_**Author's Note:**_** Godric's flashbacks will most likely be skipping around in his life from here on out, depending on which memories the events of the present bring up, as I decided this would make more sense than having them merely go in chronological order. Rest assured that I will make sure to try and lessen any confusion this might cause by telling you how old he is, or if a current memory has happened before or after a previous one, but if you still have questions, feel free to ask, whether by PM or review!**


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